Every morning thirteen
year old Rabiya Khatoon living on the edge of the Muri Gonga (a distributary of
the Hoogly river) in Ghoramara islands wake up to run to the banks and check the
level of water. The high tides have been frequently washing away her mud and
hay stacked hut more frequently than ever before. Rabiya goes to the local
school but checks the timing of the tide before leaving for school. Of late the
pucca building of the centrally located “Hathkhola Pratham Prathamik Bidyalaya,
the only primary school in the island has served more like a shelter home than
an education Center. People are used to running out of their homes to escape
the high tides that washes their homes in the middle of the night and taking
shelter in the first floor of the school building. “Rabiya lives in extreme
fear. Each year the river gets closer and closer to my house. The water frequently
washes away the huts. The mud embankment that we have built gets washed away
too. And we again build our house a little far away in the fields”, says Rabiul
Islam Saha, Rabiya’s father with tears in his eyes. A small time rice grower in
the village has to shift his house by a few meters every year for fear of being
washed away. His house couple of years back had stood on the banks where the
palm trees and the mud embankment stood. Now a
bamboo fence all across the island has been built by the villagers so that it
can withstand the cyclonic winds somewhat and give them time to take shelter in
the school.
The iota
of fear rises each day! Rabiul’s house near Kheya Ghat at the Ghoramara islands
is half bend by the flash wave of water that broke the embankment a few weeks
ago.
“We do not have any money. People who are migrating are the ones who could afford
to buy land or have place to stay. Our relatives went away. I cannot because we
have nowhere to go” shyly Rabia speaks up. At thirteen her school is closed
most of the time of the year because either teachers cannot commute regularly to
the village school or the school turns as temporary shelter for the climate
immigrants. “There is just one ferry that goes to and fro during the day to Sagar
islands. We go and buy our stuff from there. But during low tide or high tide
these ferries cannot sail and we are left stranded here”, explains Mohan Maji a
seventy year old woman who’s earns a living out of buffing the mud houses with
cow dung. She is paid rupees five for a three hour job in somewhat better homes
in the island.“The river was never like this before. It appears to be in rage.
Ganga is very angry because we have polluted her’.
The women in the island
have not heard about ‘Climate Change’ but they know the sea level is rising
rapidly. “Our homes will be gulped. We will have to move, just as we had moved
from Lohachura islands to Ghoramara two decades ago. There cannot be permanent
homes in these islands. These lands will vanish soon. We are living like guests
here”, explains Sushmita Pramanik, the wife of the Khashimara gram panchayat member
Arun Pramanik. “If this be the situation gradually one day the sea will take away
all the land of the world”, she adds.
The Pramaniks are
wealthy in the small island. They have a pucca house where people take shelter
during the flash floods at high tide times. But previously in the early
nineties Arun Pramanik grew up in a nearby island Lohachura that has completely
gone inside the water. They were amongst the first refugees of the rising sea. The
then state government facilitated their rehabilitation in Ghoramara the nearby
island spread over ten square kilometers for the new settlements to be made. The
Pramanik sons now study in the city and the father, the panchayat member holds
regular public meetings to apprise the people of the growing risk of living in the
sinking land.
Ten thousand people
were relocated from Lohachura to Ghoramara in 1995. Lohachura went completely under
the sea in the year 2000, another island Supar bhangaha also gradually gone within
the water “due to sea level rise”.In the last three decades Ghoramara islands
lost 7.6 square kilometers of land and its population of forty thousand people shrunk
to now just 4000 people living in the land in the sea. “The islands have always
been in danger since the rise in global warming. With the Ganga bed getting
flooding as never before rivers are rising and it is true that in the last
decade the erosion is faster than ever. We just have to understand the
complexities and the challenge that needs to be addressed fast” explains
Professor Sugata Hazra, noted oceanographer of Jadavpur University studying the
sea level and disappearing islands of Sundarban delta. Professor Hazra explains
that more than 80 square kilometers nearly half the size of Kolkata city has
been submerged in the past three decades in the Sundarbans delta. The island at
a distance of about 8.9 kilometers from Kakdwip, the nearby land point takes
about an hour of ferry ride to reach. There are no hospitals and the sick, the old
and pregnant women either have to be ferried to the nearest mainland or Sagar islands for
any medical support. A few locally trained ASHA workers help child births at
homes in the island.
Women and children seem
to bear the burnt the most.Men flock to mainland to find jobs and explore
possibilities of settling down while women and children remain back home to
build homes after the aftermath of floods. Fifteen year old Sheikh Firoz a
class eight drop out helps his mother clear the fallen coconut trees to make
handmade mats (leafy mats)) touse them at home and also fix it as shades to
combat the gush of water. Ashmina and Alima Khatoon both school drops outs have
just learnt the art of making ‘huts’ for living.
Firoz says his only
memory is to run at night if there is water. “I have known it since childhood.
Every night I dream of being washed away so am always ready to run to the
safest place at school.” Firoz’s father moved to the nearby island in Sagar to
work as daily wage laborer. “When he finds home for us then we will shift”, he
says.
Women with no homes, no
livelihood and large scale fear of being washed away any day have learnt the
art of hut building. They stack the hay, swab the floor polish the dry mud
walls
The villagers have
little possessions. They know there is nothing to accumulate. Some are waiting
for new homes, some for the men who have migrated to come back and take them
away.
