of water crisscrossing the red landscape and the rivers flowing in graceful bends and sustaining the villages that once defined Bengal as the granary of Eastern India (Tagore, 1961. In Completed Works: Birth Centennial Edition). Santiniketan, throughout its existence, has had a deep relationship with the local landscape, the surrounding rivers and the villages, and I hoped to find some useful information about the transformation in the landscape in recent times, especially from some of the students of the University of Visva Bharati, who are, at the same time, permanent residents of the locality. I eventually covered Santiniketan, Bolpur and Ilambazaar, the three urban centers, as well as small bank dweller villages of Bilsanda, Budhra, Keshermath and two bigger villages of Rajatpur and Satkahonia.
He referred to his mother, who said that she used to cross the Ganga on foot.
The mother is nearly 50 or thereabouts, and this means that even half a century ago, when the Ganga was not reined in at Farakka, the stream was much faster and narrower. Now the same river has swollen to gigantic proportions in the area near Farakka, in the Murshidabad district. The characteristics of the Ganga river, before the Farakka barrage, was lots of sand and a shallow stream in the summer and a huge influx of water in the monsoon season. After the barrage was built, the flooding became remarkably more destructive as well as extensive. He referred this type of flooding as man-made, as man’s activities in the form of construction on the river had actually made the river more dangerous.
His own first meeting with the Ajoy River was at 7 years of age, around 15 years ago. The prominent memories he has of that time are the huge Illambazaar bridge on the river, and memories of small slugs and snails that he used to play with when the river became narrower and shallower in summer and winter.
He also said that damming of the rivers has had a major effect on river regimes in general. This was a quite sweeping appraisal, keeping in mind the fact that the student is not a specialist in river geography or any other section of geography and environmental science. This seems to be a case where a
remarkable morphological change in a well-known river had played its role in changing people’s perceptions, resulting in the creation of a general image of the repercussion of dams on rivers. But it can also mean that post-1950s, the dam building flurry in the state of west Bengal had had a lasting and in some cases permanent effect on the rivers of the state. He said that the monsoonal rainfall pattern has changed over the years. The rains came with much more regularity before, but these days the rains come in a flurry, often in a short period of time, and this in turn leads to flash flooding in rivers. In short the climate has changed so that the Indian monsoon has become erratic, and the result has been an increasing impact of floods, when they have occurred. This is a bold claim as the pattern of the Indian monsoon has long been a subject of intense research. The Indian monsoon is a dynamic system and as with any other system of global dimensions, it has its vigorous and lean phases. The lean phases may seem as telltale signs of ‘weakening’ of the system, whereas in effect they may only be a transient phenomenon within the system itself. Human memory is short, and can be constantly shaped and reshaped by the events around. Increased news coverage of catastrophic environmental change might well be a source of such an ‘invented’
notion that the monsoonal system has indeed changed. However, a real
transformation of the system cannot be ruled out. In fact what the student said might well be the symptom of theoretical projections which show a substantially more vigorous system as a result of global warming. A warmer planet means more available energy for the system, and a rise in the sea surface temperature means a direct increase in the number and ferocity of cyclones around the planet. He said that in 2007 the monsoon ended very quickly. And in 2008, the Monsoon started very early, in summer. This was indeed the case, as I can confirm, as the rains seem to have appeared early this year. However, in hindsight, I can also confirm that the rains have not ended obviously early this year. As I write the thesis, the rains go on in what is supposed to be a season of mild Autumn weather, with little rain and golden sunshine.
Another reason mentioned by the Mukhopadhyay et al. (2006) for floods in the Ajoy basin is that the carrying capacity of the Bhagirathi Hooghly at its confluence point with the Ajoy is significantly less than the peak discharge of the Ajoy. As a result, they argue, during excess monsoonal activity, Ajoy always has an excess of water which flows through the land, thus constituting a ‘flood.’
Subsequently, from the student in Visva Bharati and quite a few others, I learned that erratic rainfall has affected the lifestyles of the people of this region,
some of who are dependent on the water of the lakes and rivers in the most direct manner. There is a village called Bangchtara (also known as Bangachatra) where fishing is the main source of livelihood. This village is situated within the Bolpur subdivision, towards Palitpur. The student said he has himself seen a change in the ecosystem as a result of the changed monsoon. The fish lay eggs after the rains come, and they are doing so earlier than ever now, and therefore the traditional fishing season, which used to nearly coincide with the major festive season of the Bengali people, is now steadily shifting towards an earlier period in the year.
4.3 Ajoy, its Floods and a Defunct (?) Research Cell :
Most students I talked to in Bolpur and Santiniketan remembered the instance of the famous 2000 flood as the most extensive they had seen. The waters rose to near the height of the railway bridge and the color was red, as a result of the waters washing in massive amounts of silt. The earthen embankments were breached at numerous places. However, there were other comparable instances of flooding in the river basin: the waters covered Muluk in the direction of Palitpur.
However, almost all of the respondents said that a huge amount of rain was
associated with the 2000 flood. This is very important data, for we shall see repeated references to excessive rains that year. After 2000, there was no fresh instance of a flood of comparable scale.
While describing who would be the most affected by the flooding of the river, the informants said that the most endangered are a section of people who live near the river bed. They are livestock raisers and subsistence farmers and sometimes engage in masonry, running small shops, etc. They have practically taken over land in the river bed and have built their houses there. The actual duration of the flood in most instances is 15-20 days, but after effects continue for years.
Curiously, none of the people in the villages that I surveyed was aware of the existence or workings of the Disaster Management Cell of Visva Bharati University, which was advertised as a potentially major think tank by one of the university’s ex Vice Chancellors, this means that either that the organization does not think managing the floods of the Ajoy basin is a worthwhile project to be involved in, or for all practical purposes the organization scarcely carries out any effective monitoring or planning work.
It was not possible for me to go to the Research Cell and talk to the
officials directly. However, I could gather some indications about the quality of the work undertaken by local NGOs, the managing head of one of which, incidentally, is also involved with the Cell. In the survey booklet by Mukhopadhyay et al., I came across this strange piece of information:
Ajay starts to spill frequently below Illambazar5 particularly after the confluence of Hinglo. (Mukhopadhyay et al., 2006: 13)
However, the fact is that Hinglo flows into Ajoy much further upstream than Ilambazaar, more than 30 kilometers further upstream from the point mentioned.
Such sloppiness in the publications seem to be common, and the booklet also does not mention adequately when and how the field work data was gathered, what procedures were utilized, and what time frame was used. In the absence of these, the survey report becomes all the less credible when viewed critically.
4.4 In the Field: Excerpts from the Land of Winding Waters, Golden Sand