A group of villagers— middle-aged and elderly— sit on the bank of Dhansiri River at Kheroni Chapori of Assam’s Darrang district, looking cautious and tense. The spot they were sitting this time is similar to a place “around one kilometre towards the east last year”. Apprehensions ran high among the peasants as the river had started erosion despite lesser rain this year.
Reaching Kheroni Chapori in the Darrang district is not an easy task. There can be two scenarios— extreme blows of dust would make you feel like choking if it is not raining or completely inaccessible if it rains as the mud road is the only way to reach it from Dalgaon town. But the consistency is the erosion caused by Dhansiri and the Brahmaputra in the Chapori in both situations.
A Chapori in Assam is a low-lying, floodplain area of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries.
Barely five ten metres from the farmers’ sitting spot, lush green fields of corn and chilly display a scenic horizon as the rising sun glitters flowing water and brightens up the colours of the vegetables in the field. Unfortunately, the intense worry among farmers was the fact that the river can alter the landscape completely as fertile land could become a river bed overnight due to erosion.
The impact of fear of losing their entire life’s work can be ascertained from statements of surrender to the government to protect their homes and hearts.
“These Chapori areas are government land, it is the only government that can provide some sort of assurance of stability even if we lose this land to erosion”, said Ali Akbar, who retired as the village headman after serving almost 5 decades.
Akbar, who is in his mid-80s, was among few people who could read and write back in the 1970s when he became the village chief in 1971. As a victim of erosion and knowing the consequences, he tried extensively to get registered in the greater area of Shyamapur chapori, Rowmari chapori, Kheroni chapori, and Arimari chapori in government land record and get land deeds for the settlers who “are all internally displaced people due to erosions”.
“After massive erosion in the 1970s, the government did a survey of the land. After the survey was complete, we thought we would get some land allotment as we all were displaced by river erosion. Since then, many MLAs, MPs, and governments came and passed by but no land settlement was done”, the retired headman said.
The indication of respite through the government’s help in Akbar’s perspective refers to having a government record that “we can show when the erosion demolishes our homes and prove that we were residents of this place”.
As the river keeps moving inwards to the western side from the east, more than 40,000 people may become internally displaced people.
“We have more than 1500 families living here in the greater area. All are dependent on this land as we only know cultivating. On one hand, we have no land records, on the other hand, we are on the brink of losing the soil to erosion”, said Iman Ali.
45-year-old Iman has again built a house at Kheroni Chapori after his own house was eroded in the recent erosion caused by the Dhansiri River a month ago. “More than 50 homes and more than 200 bighas of land were eroded in a single night. Just imagine the disposition we face year after year”, he said.
Kazimuddin Ahmed, a member of the local Arimari Gaon Panchayat, said, “The river has moved inwards and reached very close to our homes and on the other hand, the government has been evicting people settled on government land. We live under constant threat from this twin problem”.
Kazimuddin echoed what Akbar had said in the context of erosion and landlessness, “we live on government land not out of choice but due to compulsion. In my lifetime, my family had to leave behind everything at least 35 times because of erosion.”
“As an elder, when I retired, I requested the sub-divisional officer to give us land allotment. He asked whether we owned the land. I said the land was barren when we settled 60 years ago. But all my applications and requests were useless as the officer said he could do anything”, he said adding, “If erosion and eviction keep us squeezing, what option will we have as peasants who know only agriculture-related works.”
All the villagers Maktoob spoke to said that they have been trying to get the government’s attention to somehow stop the land erosion. But their apprehensions of the government’s indifference towards the erosion of the Dhansiri river near Orang National Park, where Kheroni and Shyamapur chaporis are situated, reflected in the information tabled on the assembly floor.
In April 2023, the state government said that there is no embankment of the water resources department in the area and added “Depending on the severity of erosion schemes will be floated as per requirement”.
Eviction Spree
Since the BJP came to power in 2016 for the first time, the Hindu nationalist party government has been consistently carrying out evictions of landless people settled on public land.
But since Himant Biswa Sarma took over as the CM in the BJP’s second term, these eviction drives spiralled. Between May 2021 and September 2022, the Sarma government evicted 4,449 families for allegedly ‘encroaching’ into government land.
In September 2021, two persons were killed in Darrang district’s Gorukhuti area when the government started the process to free 77,000 bighas of land from alleged ‘illegal encroachers’, a claim contested by residents and asserting they were climate refugees.
In a more recent eviction drive for the expansion of Orang National Park 3000 Muslim families were forced to leave their habitats in the Darrang and Sonitpur districts who were mostly internally displaced due to the erosion of the Brahmaputra and its tributary, Dhansiri River.
However, the Assam government has said that it did not know the number of families who were displaced due to erosion and have been evicted from government land.
Notably, Assam has lost around 4.27 lakh hectares of land due to riverbank erosion since 1950 and the annual rate of loss of land is 8000 hectares. This indicates that the people who live along the riverine areas have little security over land.
With such extensive erosion, the dispossessed population settle in new chars and as Ali Akbar says, “We (the char dwellers) are plagued in fear. Though we till the soil, we are landless because there’s no mechanism to settle the char lands.”
