Poll din drowns in rage of Brahmaputra

GOGAMUKH (DHEMAJI): In Kanuapara, the hullabaloo of electioneering is drowned in the rage of the Brahmaputra as it rapidly eats into villages along the riverbank, forcing villagers to look for fresh pastures every year. The looming threat of the rising river is the biggest concern here for the Mishing community.
Electioneering may have gathered momentum for the first phase of the polls on April 7, but for the 30-odd villages in Dhemaji district in the Lakhimpur Lok Sabha constituency, political meetings have little meaning.Their immediate battle is for survival.
Villagers complain that political parties make copious promises to address their problems in every election and slam the ruling party for not being able to do anything for the homeless here. But then the matter gets lost in the heat and dust of polling, they said.
"We hear promises every election, be it state or parliamentary polls. But our lives have not changed. Rather, the situation has turned from bad to worse," said Tuladoi Pegu, a 32-year-old mother of five children, a member of the community.
The cultural and social identity of the Mishings is woven around the banks of the Brahmaputra and its many tributaries. From 1950 to 2004, Assam has lost more than four lakh hectares of land to erosion, displacing over four lakh riparian people.
This time too, political parties have made a barrage of promises to the affected. Lakhimpur has 14,70,320 voters spread over nine assembly seats.
AICC president Sonia Gandhi in her campaign in Lakhimpur last Sunday said the UPA government would continue to help the flood and erosion affected villagers. The following day, BJP prime ministerial hopeful Narendra Modi at a rally here accused the Congress government of turning a blind eye to people's miseries caused by flood and erosion. On Wednesday, chief minister Tarun Gogoi at an election rally in Silapathar asked what the BJP had done to alleviate the sufferings of the villagers. The Mishings are used to this pre-election rhetoric.
Deobari Kaman, who is in her mid-70s, is tired of shifting her homestead from one location to another. For the past three years her family has endured this suffering. Fifty other families of her tribe have shifted almost a kilometer away from their original habitat after the Subansiri, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, devastated her village last year.
"The Subansiri has already started gobbling river banks, though in less intensity now. But there is every possibility that erosion will intensify in the coming days. Now we have to look for another place of dwelling. We don't know where to go," rued 23-year-old Ko Payeng, who gave up his studies to eke out a living in Gogamukh.
"Dhemaji is under threat from recurring floods and erosion. Many villagers have moved out of the place to look for employment in other states," said Keshav K Chatradhara, secretary of the People's Movement for Subansiri and Brahmaputra Valley, adding that at least 50,000 people in 65 panchayats are working in other states and that more than a hundred youth have left the district to work elsewhere.