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By Santadas Ghosh This is a detailed account of the ways in which cyclone Aila has snapped the fragile balance between man and nature in the delicate ecosystem of the Sundarbans, rendering a return to normalcy almost impossible. And Aila could be only a forerunner in a series of storms caused by climate change
 Water gushing through a collapsed embankment in the Sundarbans during cyclone Aila “At low tide, when the embankment was riding high on the water, Lusibari (island) looked like some gigantic earthen ark, floating serenely above its surroundings. Only at high tide was it evident that the interior of the island lay well below the level of the water. At such times the unsinkable ship of a few hours before took on the appearance of a flimsy saucer that could tip over at any moment …” -- Amitav Ghosh (The Hungry Tide) The event And the moment actually came, for the first time in the Sundarban’s recent history, on that fateful Monday, May 25, 2009, with cyclone Aila gobbling up much of the protective embankments and drowning the saucer with its salty deluge. The low-lying islands held on its lap an agricultural population with its supporting ecosystem entirely based on rain-fed sweet water. They had their sustainable stock of fish, earthworms, snakes, rats, grass and cattle. And in a sudden unforeseen event practically the entire sweet water ecosystem was washed away. Almost all the smaller creatures on the islands perished within a day by that deadly embrace of salt! This tremendous natural event has few parallels – and is very different from an ordinary flood. The saline water makes all the difference. For the moment, the event got news coverage at the national and international level. But perhaps the full implications of the catastrophe eluded the outside world. This is plausible in light of the relatively low human casualties – around 200 over the entire cyclone path, and a little over 100 in the Indian Sundarbans. But the aftermath of Aila is still making headlines in the local press and regional news channels, with no signs of improvement in the plight of the marooned people. It was reported that over half a million people in the southern districts of South and North 24 Parganas are affected. More than 50,000 houses were partially or fully damaged. Most of the damage and suffering occurred on the 54 inhabited islands spread over the two districts. But the real damage goes much beyond these numbers. For anyone who is acquainted with the people and their way of life in these parts, it should be obvious that these conventional statistics on damages are grossly inefficient to represent the true nature of the disaster. This is an event that has snapped the fragile balance between man and nature in a very delicate ecosystem. Its full implications will unfold in the months and years to come. And if Aila is a forerunner of a series of such storms as predicted by climate change models, it urgently calls for concerted efforts at the national and international level to save the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in such coastal ecosystems. The coping strategies are too costly to be borne by a provincial government alone. I will try to outline the multi-dimensionality of the disaster that has just begun to show up, without getting into the detailed statistics of damage. Embankments and the tide country The Hungry Tide captured the essence of the precarious existence of the Sundarban’s inhabited islands with remarkable accuracy. Ghosh only changed the real name of his island. To a reader not familiar with the tide country, it would be difficult to imagine what the daily onslaught of tidal water means for the lives of the island population. These low-lying, half-formed, mangrove-dominated mud-flats had been reclaimed for cultivation from about 100 years ago. The existence of human settlements over them was made possible only by earthen embankments all around them. In this watery labyrinth, such embankments run up to 3,500 km in length. They had been the lifelines of human existence in these islands. Aila damaged an unprecedented 400 km of the embankments, of which 139 km have been reportedly washed away with their bases altogether! The damage is fairly uniformly distributed across all the islands. None of them really survived. Though the cyclone had been predicted, the people and the administration had no clue what a 100-120 kmph wind speed could mean for this inter-tidal zone when combined with an unusual high tide. The fateful day was a no-moon day. This was a day when the high tide water level reached its maximum, almost licking the upper fringes of the embankments around the juvenile islands – on which people settled before they attained matured heights. Such islands in Indian the part float like lotus leaves in a shallow bay of sea water. The average height of the upper surface rises barely 4 metres above mean sea level. With tidal amplitude of 8-10 metres, most parts of the islands would have been submerged twice during the day had the embankments not existed. On full moon and no moon days, with tidal amplitude exceeding their usual margin, the rivers look like high watery expressways. Ways they actually are. Rivers are the arteries as well -- the only means of transportation across islands. In times of such a high tide, standing on the inner basin of any such island, one can see country boats of all sizes moving over the foaming and undulating waterways, seen over the embankments’ rim. From a boat on that high river, one can see what Ghosh described – the interior of the islands, awkwardly holding on its lap a fresh-water ecosystem and a dense population. The ever-bending rivers coil around the islands as a mythological serpent, which could crash the fragile embankments at will, but perhaps refraining out of mercy to the poor people. Or was it recognition by mother nature of the hard labour of the islanders? For braving to set foot on a mangrove-covered mud-flat to grow freshwater crops? For carrying out a massive project of manual labour in salty isolation? For around 100 years of their existence, this mercy of nature remained intact. But the continuation of normal life on those islands always held within a deep insecurity. On May 25, nature didn’t do anything unusual. It just matched the timings of a no-moon high tide with a cyclone blowing all through the day. This part of the Sundarbans has withstood cyclones before. It is true that the cyclonic storms generated in the Bay of Bengal mostly veer away to make their landfall on the Bangladesh and/or Orissa coast. But though outside the storm’s eye, the Indian part of the Sundarbans has withstood winds of greater velocity than those that blew that day. But those were in times when tidal amplitude didn’t peak. That made all the difference.  NASA image of Aila cyclone Uniqueness The islands in the Sundarbans survive on two vital man-made provisions – embankments and village tanks. While embankments stand guard against salt water, the tanks store the rainwater for year-long use. The islands are dotted with tanks of all sizes. In earlier times, some of the village tanks were reserved exclusively for drinking water. This is a very precious provision for the islands as groundwater is also saline for the most part here. On these premature islands, lifting groundwater for drinking and irrigation purposes is not feasible with shallow pumpsets. Only at certain places on the bigger islands, can an underground stock of freshwater be found and lifted by deep tubewells. With time, some of these tubewells came up through the efforts of government departments and some NGOs. Where they came up, tanks reserved for drinking water were gradually allowed to be used for other purposes. Even in present times some islands are still totally and some partially dependant on the village tanks for drinking water. Apart from this, the innumerable village tanks provide a vital service to the islanders throughout the year. They provide drinking water for the islands’ livestock, they are used for bathing, washing clothes, cleaning of utensils and nurturing their freshwater fish stock. Some of the stored water is also used for growing vegetables and other crops in the dry season. But mostly the islands practice rain-fed mono-crop cultivation Typically the dwelling units are simple mud huts – mud applied to a bamboo skeleton make their walls. Roofing is mostly of dry straw, and occasionally by earthen tiles or corrugated tin sheets. The huts usually stand on a little elevated earthen platform. In some islands mostly, and in others totally, this is what is meant by dwelling units. Aila’s immediate aftermath is tragic – but on television screens it doesn’t look unusual. You can see fallen trees, twisted and collapsed huts and landscape strewn with windblown debris of all sorts. You can see villagers robbed of their belongings huddled in groups on a relatively high village road or surviving embankment, or clinging to their rooftops just above the water. You can see large pools of water – trapped in rice fields, village tanks. Or it is flowing in a stream – bearing carcasses of livestock, occasionally even a human body! The uniqueness – if you need to be reminded of it – is that all that water is saline now! After two days of Aila, I could briefly set foot on one part of an island. The first shock was the stench – soon recognised as that of rotten fish. Perhaps it also carried the smell of rotten livestock – beyond my sight at that point. But I saw lots of decomposing fish dumped on the riverside of the village – all dead at least a couple of days ago. All the freshwater fish stock had died within a day when the tanks were overrun by salt water. Marooned and displaced villagers could not use them immediately. And eating such dead fish after one day, villagers knew, is deadly due to bacterial infection. The best way to dispose of the rotting fish is to bury them. But there was hardly any ground left above water. All the grass, standing crop and shrubs that was under water for more than a day looked like it had been burnt by acid! Juvenile trees that had their leaves and branches at 4-5 feet showed the high water mark by their burnt down black-brown colour. I was told by villagers that this salty inundation is cancerous to the small trees. All of them would be fully dead soon. Some of the dead carcasses were trapped in the interiors of the islands. But many of them were flown out to the open rivers. But in this 4,500 sq km delta, water really doesn’t pass; it circulates like a whirlpool – moving back and forth every 12 hours with the turn of the tides. The bodies that washed away in the river after the ebb tide, came back in a deteriorating state with the high tide. This way the carcasses kept circulating within the region till they were totally decomposed by bacterial action. Almost all the mud huts that managed to withstand Aila were under a few feet of water for a couple of days. The mud at their bases often washed off – baring the bamboo skeleton. I was also told that none of them can be repaired. Because the mud that remains has soaked in too much salt, and fresh mud does not amalgamate with salty soil. The salt changes the texture of the soil. It makes the soil brittle and eventually turns it to dust in dry days. All such standing huts – practically all of them in the villages – have to be built all over again! You see the uniqueness of Aila in many other ways as well. It is practically impossible to repair the protecting embankments within a short time. Many parts of the islands remained devoid of any embankment even a fortnight after Aila, with the saline water regularly coming into and going out with the turn of tides. Even without any fresh storm or rain, the islands have already received another big splash on the full-moon day of June 7. No one can say how many days will be needed to complete the patchworks over the entire lengths of embankments. It is like keeping a wound exposed in sultry weather, without any prospect for natural healing. Water, water everywhere – not a drop to drink! The obvious fallout of the event is the nerve-wracking shortage of drinking water. Island after island went without any source of fresh drinking water. Many of the tubewells were submerged and all the village tanks lost their freshwater within an hour! Regular trips of relief vessels from the mainland are keeping the surviving islanders in food and drinking water. But one can imagine that any amount of portable relief supplies are meagre for a disaster of this scale. This is a tremendous damage that is still not showing signs of restoration. People are spending nights and days in the open, mostly gathered on surviving embankments, looking for relief boats. They are unable to initiate any restoration of order and assets by themselves -- crippled by the exposed lands that regularly take in high tide waters. The nature of this disaster is recognised by the concerned government quarters. Relief supplies are forthcoming. Many civil society organisations and NGOs pitched in for relief operations. But in this chaotic situation, it is obvious that supplies are not always equitably distributed or given to the most vulnerable. Many people are in the makeshift relief camps housed in village school buildings. But nobody knows when they can return home – or the places where their home once stood. The impact of such a large-scale drinking water problem is already showing up – the onset of widespread diarrhoea. Thousands of people are affected, with no official estimate forthcoming on this. An official estimate of livestock loss is also not available as of now. The situation is too critical and the administration is too pressed for relief work – number-crunching has taken a backseat. One can only say that the onset of widespread health hazards is inevitable. After Aila: Days ahead Relief supplies in other natural disasters are a temporary lifeline, only to be followed by gradual restoration of normal life. Recovery from flood in other parts of the mainland is a unidirectional process. It means gradual restoration of order and livelihoods – with outside help. Immediate crop losses from freshwater floods are usually followed by a good harvest in the next season. But the situation in the Sundarbans is markedly different. As long as the embankments are not fully restored all over the islands, no improvement is in sight. Floods will continue to recur. Every fortnight there will be fresh flooding due to the lunar boost to the water level. The salt deposits in the soil will mean nil or little agriculture for at least a couple of years now. One can hardly imagine the implications of this for half a million people, over 90% of whom are directly dependent on agriculture. This event has crushed the very backbone of the islands’ economies. Four days after the event, I could finally establish mobile contact to one of my old acquaintances on an island. To my anxious queries, his answer was very brief. With a deep sigh he uttered, “We cannot live on these islands anymore -- we are finished!” And then he felt silent. I did not know how to carry on the conversation. A fortnight later, again from unofficial sources, I heard that almost one quarter of the village people had vacated the islands and somehow moved to the mainland. Climate change forerunner? Scientific research has already established that the greatest threat to the future of the Sundarbans is posed by the continued global warming and resulting sea level rise. Apart from this, more short-term threats to human lives and livelihoods could come from an increased frequency of cyclones and even super-cyclones. This also means an increasing probability of their coinciding with extreme high tides. Cyclone Aila has just shown what this means for the delta. If Aila is a forerunner of many such events in the future, one has to really think beyond repairing the embankments in the present way. At stake is a population of half a million now. In this densely populated state, rehabilitating them in the mainland seems a difficult solution. Yet, a solution has to emerge. It is impossible to allow the recurrence of such events. The Sundarbans will be depopulated for all practical purposes if such events occur at regular intervals. It is a disaster that should be handled with utmost care by all concerned – to find a long-term feasible solution. Endnote: Depopulation and repopulation I qualified the event as ‘unprecedented in recent history’. But the Sundarbans have a much older history of human settlement. Historical findings in the region bear convincing evidence that the area had been populated even at the time of Asoka (273-232 BC), though the evidence so far has failed to add up to a comprehensive account of continued civilisation in this delta. However, it is well established that due to a series of natural calamities the region was gradually losing its population during the Middle Ages. Eventually, after the invasion of Portuguese and Arakan pirates in the delta waters, the area was completely depopulated. The forest reclaimed the previously inhabited area and when the British East India Company set up its headquarters at Kolkata, it was at the edge of the forest. Almost all the inhabited islands of the Sundarbans were cleared of forests for human settlement within the last quarter of the 19th century to the first quarter of the 20th century. The settlements were planned by the British administration with the stated objective of revenue collection The presentday island population thus bears a history of only a little over 100 years. I was told by the older generation that they had never seen – or even heard from their forefathers -- of a calamity of this scale in Sundarbans. It seems that the British started an economic venture – almost a gamble against nature’s wishes – that somehow held its show till now. Only on that black Monday, luck actually ran out. (The author is a Reader in Economics at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan (West Bengal). This article is a description of events in the Indian Sundarbans as they stood in the first week of June 2009 -- a fortnight after the devastating cyclone. The author is a regular visitor in that area for the last four years) Infochange News & Features, July 2009
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