Man creates while the Almighty disrupts

• by Jayanta Mout

Jamini Payeng of Upar Sonowal village lost her three bighas of farmland to erosion after two waves of flooding last year. She and members of her family now eke out a living as farm laborers. Back in 2000, the merciless Brahmaputra snatched away five bighas belonging to Muktinath Saikia of Salmara-Besamara village. Eight years on, his family survives on his petty job at the Char Area Development Authority office. Even two seasons ago, these women could augment the household income by making pottery items for sale. Now with the erosion becoming acute, even the particular clay required for pottery has become scarce.

Payeng and Saikia are mere examples. With the land shrinking and the number of landless increasing, people all across the Majuli Island seek out odd jobs for a paltry income. Their despair is compounded when farm activities cease during the season of floods. In the ten years since 2000, 9,027 families have lost their homes and croplands to erosion. Of these, 4,598 families eke out a living as agricultural laborers, daily wage earners and driftwood and fish sellers. And even these means of livelihood are limited these days.

Recently, I visited the campus of Assam Medical College, Dibrugarh. In the Fourth Grade Line, most of the employees of PWD had built small but comfortable cottages with their own effort. These families have been living in that place for more than twenty years. As part of their collective unity and harmony, even they established a ‘Namghar’. And in this way they lived with love and peace by shaping their small village. All the families were sympathetic to one another and interdependent.

But the gods are always jealous of too much contentment in any where. So there is now continuing sorrow and melancholy as these families have to leave each other for good. Message has come from medical authorities that these families must leave the village. It was heard that they will construct new buildings there.

In such a way, the cordial nexus of our social bindings are demolished either to serve our own requirement or to follow nature’s usual demand. But we as human beings are always optimistic for a better future. Is it for this reason that P B Shelly wants to sing, “If Winter comes can spring be far behind.”