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By Richard Mahapatra In 1930, land records show an area of 320 sq km for the Satabhaya cluster of seven villages near Paradip in Orissa. Land records for 2000 indicate that this area has been reduced to 155 sq km. Five of the seven villages have been swallowed by the sea. Several other villages in Orissa are likely to suffer the same fate. Is Orissa paying the price of climate change? This special series by Richard Mahapatra investigates
 Nature doesn’t like immortality. Nigamanand Pradhan, an 11-year-old student in Kanhapur village in Orissa’s coastal district of Kendrapara, realised that on September 18, 2005. His village, immortalised as the home of the fabled Tapoi, a folk character epitomising Orissa’s glorious maritime trade history, will soon be wiped off the map of Orissa. And with it will go the last relic of Orissa’s economic might; the state is now the poorest in India. It was the night before September 18 that Nigamanand’s father had told him that the Tapoi story in his school textbook was set in his village.
Nigamanand, who dreamt all night long about his village’s unforgettable past, rushed to school early the next morning to share this piece of history with his friends. “My school had just vanished into the sea. I could only find the blackboard that had been swept to shore half-a-kilometre from the village,” he says. As his parents prepare to shift their home, now just 50 metres from the violent Bay of Bengal, they tell Nigamanand: “For the third time we are shifting away from the sea. The original location of the village is some 1 km inside the sea.” Within three months, the sea has swallowed up the village school, its rice-processing factory and a few metres of precious agricultural land. The ruins of the rice-processing factory can still be seen when the sea is calmer in the late-afternoon. Benudhar Pradhan, Nigamanand’s father, says, “The sea, a distant dream 50 years ago, is now a real nightmare.” Going by the residents’ calculations, the sea will consume all of Kanhapur within a few years. “We don’t have any option now but to migrate,” says Pradhan. The 500-odd residents of the village agree. Indeed, the sea has already encircled the village on three sides. One can judge its progress by the fact that five of the six tubewells set up at regular intervals along the village’s main street are submerged. During high tide, the water comes close to the single tubewell left; the well remains a gauge post by which the villagers measure the sea’s incursions. Just a year ago, one of the tubewells could be seen half-submerged in the sea. Now it is no longer visible.  Five years ago, Nalinikant Biswas’ house was on Kanhapur beach. Even today, during low tide, he can see the foundations of his mud home. Biswas had 4 acres of fertile land, enough to lead a comfortable life. Now, with just 1 acre of land, he has decided to quit farming. “My land is totally saline due to seepage of seawater. In the last two years I earned a meagre two quintals of paddy,” he says.
The constant threat of a rising sea is forcing him to move out. But where to? “I don’t have the money to buy land and I’m not sure whether I can further encroach land as it is part of the national park,” he says. Biswas’ future is as uncertain as the sea. Just a kilometre away is Satabhaya village. Nigamanand Rout, the 40-year-old sarpanch of the village, who also represents Kanhapur village, is puzzled. His village has shifted four times in the last three decades to maintain a safe distance from the marching sea. “The sea level is rising, taking away one village after another. My tenure will end in three years. I am not sure whether my constituency will exist at that time,” he says. Rout has been fighting two unmanageable players: the rising sea and a government that barely acts. “I am slowly reconciling to the fact that our existence is doubtful. But why is the sea rising? I should know the reason so that other villages can be saved,” he says. The Satabhaya region, once a cluster of seven villages, is located some 25 km from the port of Paradip, at the confluence of the Mahanadi and Brahmani rivers. One has to walk 10 km from the nearby small town of Gupti, criss-crossing crocodile-infested mangroves, to reach the villages that are situated inside the Bhitarkanika National Park, famous for mass nestings of the Olive Ridley turtle. As night descends, the 1,000 people left in the remaining two villages live with the ever-present fear that the sea will come and grab their last chance of survival. During the late-1990s, the population of the two villages was around 3,000, but most people have moved out after losing their lands to the sea. “People are so scared of the sea that even a high tide triggers panic,” says Rout. The two villages are only five metres away from the sea during high tide. “Every day we lose a few things,” says Mahendra Biswal, a 65-year-old farmer in Satabhaya. “Since the 1980s we have been fighting constant rises in sea level. I don’t even remember exactly where my home was located. It is now somewhere inside the sea.” According to local residents, the sea has advanced around 2.5 km in the last 15 years. Earlier, people lost their houses and were forced to move to their agricultural lands that stayed fallow due to excess salinity. The surge For 25 years, this patch of the Orissa coastline has been witnessing significant rises in sea level. Of the seven villages that formed the Satabhaya cluster, five have ceased to exist. The sea has swept inland by 2.5 km. “I visited the area two years ago and could see a few buildings and tubewells half submerged in the sea. Now nothing is visible,” says Ashis Senapati, district reporter of The Times of Indiaand a local resident. Several years ago, the palace of the erstwhile king of Kanika was still visible from the shore, a few metres inside the sea; today, people are unsure about its exact location. G K Pujari, a scientist with Orissa’s environment department, says: “One thing is certain, the sea level is rising here, therefore the quick ingression.” The first villages to vanish into the sea in the early-1980s were Govindpur, Mahnipur and Kuanriora. Then, in the mid-1990s, two more villages -- Kharikula and Sarpada – were submerged. Now, besides Satabhaya and Kanhapur, 18 other villages along the coast are at risk. Most have barely 40-50% of their lands intact. Constantly pushed back by the sea, the local residents find themselves in a unique situation: technically they are encroachers as their legal documents show their lands are somewhere inside the sea. In fact, the government still asks for land revenue and the villagers pay it to maintain their legal status. Dilip Kumar Manda, who has settled in Okilpara village, some 15 km away from Satabhaya, used to be a resident of the now non-existent village of Govindpur. As he accompanies me to Satabhaya, he tells me what it used to be like all those years ago. “As a kid I used to take five hours to go out to sea and come back home,” he says. Govindpur was a prosperous village of around 500 people, located some 2 km from the sea. Dilip’s parents shifted three times before migrating out of the village. “We lost everything, from our home to our agricultural lands to our livelihood. Nobody had any idea why the sea was rising,” he recalls. After the 1971 cyclone, three villages in Satabhaya -- Govindpur, Mahnipur and Kuanriora -- started losing their battle with the sea. For five years the water advanced so much that by 1976 the three villages were deep inside the sea. Many of the villagers resettled on government land near the sea. But the sea continued its rampage; by 1985, the displaced villagers were temporarily settled some 4 km from their original villages. Finally, during 1986-88, they migrated to other areas. According to Dilip, people from his village and from Mahnipur settled in an open field that has now become Okilpara village. Okilpara, as the last refuge against the rising sea, still receives settlers from Satabhaya and Kanhapur. The same story was repeated after the 1982 cyclone when rising sea levels submerged the villages of Kharikula and Sarapada. In just three years these two villages of around 1,800 people were swept off the face of the earth. There is barely any information about who went where, although some people settled in Okilpara. They may just be the lucky few survivors! Falling off the map Mohan Pradhan, a land surveyor (called amina in the local language), looks grave as he dusts off old records in the dilapidated tehsil office in Gupti. He insists that most of the villages I mention have vanished. He rolls down two hand-drawn maps, one of 1930 and another of 1990 (land records are prepared every 50 years). The last land survey was released in 1990 after the process was completed in 1988. There is a stark difference between the two maps: in the 1990 map, the Bay of Bengal has moved significantly inland. “That is the area under the sea at that time. You have visited the area now so you have seen how much more has gone inside the sea,” he says. In the 1990 records, the government showed that all seven villages suffered high levels of sea erosion. But it didn’t mention total submergence. By 1999, the tehsil department had regrouped the villages: officially, Satabhaya and Kanhapur now exist as one panchayat. In 1930, the Satabhaya cluster of seven villages had an area of 320 sq km; in 2000 it is shown as just 155 sq km. The 1990 map clearly shows that 18 other villages along the coast in the same region suffer sea erosion. Of them, three villages -- Badagahirmatha, Sanagharimatha and Sahebpur -- are already inside the sea. Residents of these villages have resettled in a nearby casuarina forest. Submergence of villages in Satabhaya region, Orissa coast: An indicative table Name of village | 1930 records and area of village (approximate) | 1988 land records | 2005 situation (based on people’s perceptions only) | Number of times the village has shifted | Govindpur | 300 acres | 218.80 acres | Inside sea (tentatively 2.5 km) | 3 | Satabhaya | 520 acres | 412.70 acres | 90 acres left (10 metres away from sea) | 4 | Kanhapur | 250 acres | 141.32 acres | 25 acres left (7 metres away from sea) | 3 | Paramanandpur | 100 acres | 70.85 acres | Inside sea (tentatively 1.5 km) | 3 | Sahebnagar | 70 acres | 67.27 acres | Inside sea (tentatively 3 km) | Not known | Badagahirmatha | 29 acres | 21.88 acres | 4 acres left, non-existent | People have migrated | Sanagharimatha | 129 acres | 118.71 acres | Inside sea | People have migrated | Source: The first two columns are from state government land records |
Another assurance, as uncertain as the sea The state government is aware of the situation of these coastal villages. In fact, since the 1980s, it has been proposing a rehabilitation package for Satabhaya, Kanhapur and other nearby villages. The rising sea levels and coastal erosion have been discussed in the state assembly seven times in the last five years. In fact, a high-level state committee has suggested carrying out a scientific study. But there have been no moves in this direction. The rehabilitation package proposes moving people to the nearby village of Bagapatia. But local residents say this is unacceptable as groundwater in the Bagapatia area is saline. Despite rising sea levels, they still manage to get freshwater where they are. In 2004, Orissa Chief Minister Navin Patnaik inaugurated a new location called Nagarkanda for the villagers’ rehabilitation. He has set aside Rs 9.4 million for the package. But the forest department has not given its clearance for the rehabilitation, as the new area is inside the proposed Bhitarakanika National Park. “The CM’s assurance was a great hope. But there (has since been) no news about the rehabilitation scheme,” says Rout. Insiders say the proposal is being redrafted and may take another few years before it is finalised. | (Richard Mahapatra has been awarded this year’s CCDS-InfoChangeIndia Research Fellowship for reportage on issues related to sustainable development and social justice. His research is on the impact of climate change in Orissa. Mahapatra has been reporting on environment and development issues for several years. He has written extensively for journals such as Down to Earth.) InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
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