LIVING WITH FURY

The Brahmaputra has been playing havoc with Palashbari, once a highly prosperous area about 30 kilometres south of Guwahati, since the great earthquake of 1950 that changed the entire character of the mighty river. “While the earthquake changed the river’s basic character, it began attacking Palashbari from 1954 onwards, gulping down stretches of land as if someone were slicing away a cake,” recalled Ratnakanta Das, an elderly resident, pointing towards somewhere in the middle of the river to show where his original house stood 40 years ago.

“Our house was about a kilometre-and-a-half away from here,” he said. In fact, the entire locality called Palashbari, a cluster of about 10 villages, disappeared into the river between 1954 and 1955. Then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru ordered the shifting of all the residents to places away from the river. Some 200 families accepted the government’s rehab scheme, but others refused to budge, choosing to face the river instead. The river has since then taken away at least 50 villages, beginning with Palashbari in this South Kamrup region.

The Brahmaputra, which used to be hardly a kilometre wide in 1954, is today a little over six kilometres wide between Palashbari on the south bank and Bamundi on the north. And it is merely 1.2 km wide at Saraighat, the first bridge on the river that is about five km upstream from Palashbari.

“Palashbari is in itself a phenomenon. Since the 1950s, the government has sunk in crores of rupees in the name of protecting this area. But what we believe is that while most of the efforts have been half-hearted, numerous government engineers and contractors have become millionaires, courtesy Palashbari,” said Kishore Talukdar, a post-graduate in English literature from Gauhati University, who earns his living as a private tutor for 20-odd high school students after having given up hope for a government job.

That the government’s approach is definitely half-hearted is proved by just one case, points out Talukdar, who also works as a local correspondent for a leading newspaper published from Guwahati. “The government sanctioned a project worth Rs 21.04 crore to protect Palashbari in 1994. But only Rs 9.35 crore was released till March 2000,” he said, quoting from a government document that also mentions how contractors have refused to work because of non-payment of bills.

The authorities were to carry out bank protection work for a running length of 4.9 km along the river covering the existing portion of Palashbari and a couple of adjoining villages. “But government records clearly mention that boulder protection works were carried out only in patches, leaving several portions unprotected,” said Anil Kalita, a schoolteacher.

Meanwhile, the Brahmaputra, which has a tendency to shift to the south, continues to play with its banks. It has already eaten away nearly 60 per cent of a dyke (protection measures are mostly of earthen dykes with some rock boulder reinforcement), while another dyke (no 6) is likely to break any moment. “I don’t think the Centre alone can control the fury of the Brahmaputra. We need foreign experts, may be some international collaboration,” said Ratnakanta Das, who only recently sent a letter to Saifuddin Soz, Union Minister for Water Resources, with this suggestion.

Two teams from the Asian Development Bank recently visited the area and carried out a survey. Everybody here is hoping that something positive would come out of the ADB visits. Till then, Palashbari is at the mercy of a river to whom Bhupen Hazarika had asked in one of his numerous songs on the river: “If you are the son of Brahma, the Creator/ then shame on you for that parentage/ Why do you flow so indifferently/ despite hearing the cry of millions who live by your banks?”