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dam-l IPS: Eroding Rivers Wreak Havoc in Eastern India
>ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN-INDIA: Eroding Rivers Wreak Havoc in Eastern India
>
>By Subir Bhaumik
>QUTUBPUR, India, May 25 (IPS) - Two silt-laden, turgid rivers are rapidly
>changing course in easten India, and threatening to submerge villages and
>towns, and fertile farmlands, both in India and Bangladesh.
>
>Ancient hamlets like Qutubpur that have prospered on farming for centuries,
>have lost chunks of cultivable land to the Ganga and its tributary
>Bhagirathi, which are now, only a little more than one km from each other at
>Qutubpur.
>
>Scores of panic-stricken peasant families have fled the village, because of
>the ''merciless'' erosion by the rivers, that has eroded their capacity to
>feed themselves.
>
>''Our village is being sandwiched between the Ganga and the Bhagirathi. At
>this rate, it will vanish soon and the two rivers will merge and become
>one,'' said Aminul Islam, who has lost three acres of fertile paddy land in
>the last two years.
>
>Muhammed Selim has been reduced to a pauper, having lost all his farmland to
>the river. ''I am a beggar now, I work as a sharecropper in other people's
>fields. Five years ago, I was the owner of four acres of very good paddy
>land,'' laments Selim.
>
>Worried experts like hydrologist Dhruva Ghoshal say the Ganga and Bhagirathi
>are swiftly merging, threatening the ''lower parts of West Bengal including
>Calcutta'' -- or the combined water could flow into eighbouring Bangladesh.
>''Whichever way this water passes through, it would mean disaster,'' he
>warned.
>
>Some 48,000 hectares of good farm land have vanished in the last five years
>in West Bengal alone. Both rivers are worshipped as sources that sustain
>life, but here they have turned vengeful and destroyers.
>
>The township of Jalangi, north of Calcutta, en route to Qutubpur, has lost
>its main market centre, the old police station and one school to the river.
>''They were just eaten away by this merciless river,'' a local police
>official, Mriganko Banerji, said.
>
>Across the border in Bangladesh, water experts are keeping a close watch on
>the Padma, as the Ganga is called in that country, which is ploughing a new
>path on its way to the sea in the Bay of Bengal.
>
>According to a leading water expert in Dhaka, Ain-un-Nishat, ''if the two
>rivers merge, large tracts of low lying land in the Bengal basin, whether in
>Bangladesh or in West Bengal, will be simply wiped out.''
>
>Because no one is certain which way the merged river would flow, governments
>in West Bengal and Bangladesh have not been able to estimate the cost of
>losses, but they are pleading for urgent action.
>
>India's top hydrologist D.P. Agarwal advises the need for a master plan
>toprevent the impending calamity. ''Throwing a few boulders here and a few
>boulders there would not help. This is a national calamity and the whole
>country should rise to the occasion to prevent the disaster,'' he said.
>
>West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu raised the issue during his meeting
>with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on May 18, and demanded the
>central government foot the major share of a 150 million dollar project to
>stop the rivers' from changing course.
>
>Under the project, the rivers' embankments will be fortified and
>strengthened, with the dumping of iron nets filled with boulders where the
>erosion is at its worst. In some other places, concrete embankments are
>being considered.
>
>However, people in the affected areas have little faith in the state
>government's ability to move speedily with the implementation of the plan.
>They say that contractors who win the lucrative project are likely to make a
>lot of money.
>
>''If they dump 10 iron nets full of boulders, they will bill the government
>for 30. The (government) engineers (will) clear their payments because they
>get a cut,'' alleges Hamid-ul-Sheikh of Qutubpur.
>
>Atish Sinha, opposition leader, who belongs to Murshidabad, the district
>worst affected by river erosion, says th army should be brought in to carry
>out this anti-erosion project on a war footing. The opposition blames the
>state's communist government, in power for close to two decades, for much of
>the problems.
>
>''This state government is corrupt and incompetent. They just cannot handle
>a crisis of this magnitude and the centre should take charge and ask the
>army to implement the anti-river erosion projects,'' he said.
>
>As West Bengal's panchayats (village councils) go to polls on May 28, the
>problem of river erosion dominates the campaign in the thousands of villages
>along the Ganga.
>
>''The nuclear bombs will not save us. Vajpayee should ask his scientists to
>perform a miracle here,'' said Shahid-ul-Haq of Domkal, a village near here.
>
>People want to know if the government can keep the Ganga and the Bhagirathi
>apart. But there are no simple answers to this question, officials say,
>urging villagers to be patient and help them in working out a solution.
>(End/IPS/sb/an/98)
>