Brahmaputra threatens to cut off NH link

Three months after floods have receded, the Brahmaputra is now causing erosion, threatening to cut off National Highway 37, the lone road linking the Assam capital and the industrial districts of upper Assam.

The river has already devoured 1600 bighas of patta land over the past four weeks with standing crops, fruit orchards and field huts disappearing rapidly along a stretch of about six kilometres. The highway, which was about 700 metres away from the south bank of the river a month ago, is today as close as 300 metres, causing local residents to panic. ‘‘We have been living under a constant threat with the river advancing southward by several metres every day. But the government has remained a mute witness, except for a few bamboo poles being put up to obstruct the river from hitting the bank with force,’’ said Ramesh Lal Chouhan, a former president of the Jakhalabandha gaon panchayat. The Brahmaputra, said village elders, has moved about four kilometres southwards from where it was 40 years ago, washing away two embankments in the process, the first in 1963 and the second in 1972. ‘‘The river has been moving southward for over four decades, but the authorities have only resorted to a policy of retreating in the face of its advancement,’’ said Kamini Sharma, a retired headmaster. Sharma recalled the visit of union minister K.L. Rao to this area in 1962, and said that since then, the policies of successive governments have only led to more and more loss of land, while the river continues to come closer to the highway. ‘‘Once the river washes the highway away, not only will the upper Assam districts be cut off, but the supply lines of Nagaland and Manipur will also be severed,’’ Sharma pointed out. The local residents meanwhile complained that even as Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi came here on October 26, followed by Union Minister of State for Water Resources Bijoya Chakravarty, no step has been taken to arrest the erosion. While the Chief Minister blamed Chakravarty for failing to initiate any action, the union minister, also an MP from Guwahati, has accused the state government of not issuing a ‘‘No Objection’’ letter for her ministry to begin protection work.

‘‘We are now caught in a cross fire of politics,’’ remarked Kusum Bora, another retired teacher, who is compiling a social history of this area. The spot where erosion is going on is also the southern tip of the sixth extension of the Kaziranga National Park, comprising three small reserved forests, Kukurakata, Baramur and Barghop. Leaders of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the opposition Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) have also made a beeline to the spot where erosion is going on unabated, but they have failed to exert any pressure on the authorities, rued local youth Umapati Mishra, founding member of a new group called Nature’s Havoc Protection Committee, that aims to generate more awareness about the problem.

‘‘The panic-stricken villagers have lost faith in the government and resorted to offering a puja to the river,’’ said Mishra, who said that elders recalled a myth that the Brahmaputra would one day marry Champawati, a smaller river that flows along the other side of the highway.