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By Kirti Mishra The crisis of livelihood in flood-affected Assam has reduced former landowners to illegal foragers of driftwood from the river
 The village of Garpara, in Phukanarkhat panchayat, Dibrugarh, became a casualty of the flooding of the Brahmaputra in 2000. The entire village was submerged and its residents were resettled on the grazing lands of Chamonigaon (Rohmoirya panchayat) by the district administration.
Inhabited by the Chutia, Motak and adivasi communities, Garpara had seen good times with electricity, a school, an anganwadi and a pucca road linking the village with Dibrugarh and Tinsukhia. After the floods, its residents were forced to survive on relief handouts and live under tarpaulin sheets for months in the dark, like fugitives. I spoke to a man in Natun Chamonigaon whose lands had been claimed by the Brahmaputra in the erosion that took place after the flooding. Only when I saw the enormity of the river as it advanced angrily each day, threatening the people who were so dependent on it, did I begin to comprehend the depth of the problem and the sense of loss. The man took me to a place on the riverbank which once was a prosperous tea estate. Now cattle frequented the area. He pointed to where his land once was and said it had been so fertile that the produce would sometimes last two years. “Then, the only things required to be bought from the market were sugar and matches,” he said. Now he has nothing -- no agricultural land, no cattle, no sense of security. He gets an occasional hajira (daily wage) and depends for a living on wood brought down by the river. Nearby lie stacks of wet logs on which depend the livelihoods of all those who lost their land to the river. Hunger and desperation often drives people into the Dibru Saikhowa National Park in Tinsukhia district. And sometimes up into the forests of Arunachal Pradesh from where they smuggle out logs to sell to contractors for Rs 300 per ‘thak’. Although the risks are enormous, the people have no alternative. Before 2000, even the poorest of Garpara’s people had a few bighas of land on which they grew rice, maize and mustard. Since 2000, the average size of landholdings is half a bigha (ex-gratia from the government), on which nothing can be grown. To eke out a living people collect logs from the river. Few can afford livestock; there is just no space to do so. Some rear goats, which they sell off during times of crises. Even the collection of wood is seasonal. Wood cannot be collected between July and mid-September because the water levels are too high. It would take a person around four days, camped out in a boat on the Brahmaputra , to collect a stack of wood that would earn him Rs 300. A family would have to go out on the river three or four times a month to collect wood. The monthly income would be around Rs 3,000; Rs 900 would be spent on rent for the boat, per month, in addition to a yearly tax paid out to the gram panchayat. And there are tremendous risks involved. Besides the vagaries of the weather -– rain and frequent storms -- there are forest guards patrolling the river on ferries. Cropping patterns in the village have changed over time, so have the dietary habits of the inhabitants. Earlier people collected fruits such as mango, jackfruit, olive, pineapple and guava from Panbari forest (now no more than a myth); today these fruits are rarely eaten and only when they are available in the market. Similarly, varieties of fish such as sal, mangur, kanwoi, garai (kado machchli) that once constituted the people’s staple diet are no longer available after the floods. According to the secretary of Rohmoria panchayat, erosion in Rohmoria had become so severe that if adequate measures were not taken the higher secondary school would be swept away by the mighty river that flows just a few metres from it. The people here are desperate and angry. They feel that the government understands only one language -- aggression. After 1998, when Oil India Limited (OIL) tried to extract oil from the area, the villagers put up strong resistance. On August 16, 1999 , they staged a massive protest and blockaded the oil well, demanding the construction of a river embankment to halt the erosion. Since 1999, all production in the Khagarijan oilfield has been suspended, with the villagers reiterating that they will not allow the area’s natural resources to be drained away without any commitment to the immediate needs and survival of the local residents. They have demanded that eight dampeners be built on the banks of the river before April 2004, on a trial basis. But the work was never completed. To protest, people have stopped paying land revenue, or mati ka khajana. A chance encounter with another resident, Majendra Nath Chutia, highlighted the fragile nature of livelihoods in this area and the level of deprivation. Chutia lost his land and assets to floods and erosion in 2000. He once was the proud owner of 20 bighas of agricultural land. Today, he lives on half-a-bigha -- a small patch of green he calls a farm. He once was a small businessman. Today he leads a prematurely retired life. He has no capital to start up a business of his own. Nor can he access bank credit as no legal proof of land ownership was ever given to him by the state government. Chutia’s two sons gave up their studies after the flood and have taken over as the bread-earners of the family. They illegally log nearby forests and collect wood from the river. When I met Chutia he was preparing to go out on the river. It was four days since his sons had left on a boat. He had not heard from them since. There was a sense of impending doom in the family. Chutia suddenly got up and went into an adjoining room. His wife brought us tambul and paan in a metal hourglass container. Chutia returned carrying a small discoloured polythene bag in which he kept his medicines and prescriptions. The conversation shifted to his wife. Chutia carefully took out a folded yellowed prescription and handed it to me. It was from the Medical College in Dibrugarh, referred by the psychiatric department. Soon after the floods, Chutia’s wife developed an acute psychological disorder. Chutia claims as many as 13 families reported cases where women, in shock over the incredible loss of lives and property, became severely depressed. Every month, Chutia takes his wife to the Medical College -- sometimes by bus, mostly on his cycle. His average monthly expenditure on medicines comes to no less than Rs 75. This, at a time when he has no secure means of earning a livelihood. Adivasi victims of the floods are in worse shape, as they are doubly disadvantaged -- they have lost whatever small patch of land they once owned and they are also poorly integrated into the mainstream and face social discrimination. Despite their settlements in Assam for more than a century, they remain ‘outsiders’ without scheduled tribe status (as was accorded to them in their place of origin). They are therefore denied the constitutional entitlements granted to backward communities. Given the current crisis in the tea industry in Assam , the focus is on cutting down production costs. The burden of this is being borne by the tea labour communities. The shift towards greater casualisation of labour and the constant fear of ‘chotai’ (being laid off) by the tea estate has compounded the misery of these communities. In an average household, the husband collects wood from the river while the wife works as a casual tea garden labourer, earning Rs 48.50 a day for collecting the mandatory 22 kg of tealeaves. The casual labour force is not covered by the Plantation Labour Act of 1951 and the Assam Plantation Rules, 1956. Therefore it is denied most of the privileges enjoyed by permanent workers on tea estates. Across various segments of the population affected by the floods in Garpara, the common appeal has been that while government relief is necessary for survival, the state has to do much more to provide employment and strengthen livelihoods in the post-relief stage. (Kirti Mishra is a programme officer at a Delhi-based voluntary organisation) InfoChange News & Features, January 2005
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