Where men migrate and the river meanders

“Everyone who goes out of the State to work doesn’t die,” Rafiqul Sheikh, 32, assured his wife, Rabijan, who did not want her husband to leave their village Chauduar in West Bengal’s Malda district to go in search of work. Within a week after leaving, in the second week of February, Rabijan got a phone call from Aizawl in Mizoram informing her that her husband had died in an accident. Rabijan, 30, carrying their nine-month-old child in her arms, laments, “I did not want him to go. But there was no work here and he did not listen to me.”

Rafiqul is not the only one from Chauduar to have died while working at a construction site in Mizoram. In August last year, 12 men from the village died when a bridge being constructed by the railways collapsed on workers, also in Aizawl. Chauduar village, located about 20 km from Malda town, is still recovering from the tragedy.

Beyond the mango orchards, which failed to bear fruit this season because of unseasonal rains, the village shows no signs of any political activity ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. On the day when Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a roadshow in Malda town in support of party candidates Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury from Malda Dakshin and Khagen Murmu from Malda Uttar, an autorickshaw went around the village making an announcement about a religious jalsha (gathering) in the night.

Nuresha Khatun, former Congress panchayat pradhan (head) of Chaudhuar, says the village has very few men left as most have migrated for work. “I remember when 11 bodies and later, one more body, came to the village from Mizoram. But the tragedy has not stopped men from going out to seek employment as migrant workers,” says Khatun. The men left behind in the village are either over 60 or injured from working in towers or bridges in other States.

The trauma of loss

Tauphid Akhtar, 49, is one of the few survivors of the Mizoram bridge collapse tragedy. “It was about 9.30 a.m. on August 23. I was working on the site when I saw the structure come crashing down. My son Sahin was buried under the rubble,” he says. There is no work at home, but Akhtar cannot leave the State — the trauma is just too much.

Barely 50 metres from Akhtar’s house is the home of Nazim Hossain, 24, who was injured in the bridge-collapse accident. Hossain says that while families whose men died in Aizawl got compensation from the Centre and State, he and Rabijan are yet to receive any help.

Outside the home of Zhoru Sheikh and Mahiman Bibi, who lost six members of the family, including their son Saidur Rahaman, Mainurul Islam says he has worked in different parts of the country: “I had gone to work in Patan and Vadodara, the land of Narendra Modi. I have grown old now, and my son now works in Kerala.”

To the State and Central governments’ claim that there are enough jobs, Mainurul says, “They made promises about giving jobs, won elections and formed a government.” Chauduar village falls under Ratua II block of Malda district, and the villagers say that no politician has campaigned this time, though they had come last year, after the tragedy.

Congress block president of Ratua II block, Nemai Chandra Basak, admits that jobs in Malda are irregular and low-paying (₹200 to ₹250 a day). In places like Mizoram, villagers earn ₹20,000 to ₹23,000 a month. Basak feels that if minimum wages (starting from ₹376 and going up to ₹501) are guaranteed, people will not work elsewhere and risk their lives.

Lost land

The river Ganga gently flows along the Panchananadapur Ghat in Malda, where large wooden boats line the bank. Khidir Box, in his 50s, a resident of Bangitola village under Mothabari Assembly seat, takes a boat ride under the scorching sun.

“I want to show you my home,” says Box, a local primary school teacher, enthusiastically. As the boat navigates the chars (river islands formed by silt), he points to two places along the river where his house was located. “I have faint memories of the first house, which had a custard apple tree. The next house disappeared before my eyes in 1999,” he recalls.

At the chars, crops are cultivated and a hut or two have sprung up. Khidir brings out a pen and paper and begins to draw the course of the river and its numerous chars. The river has changed its course, and now flows like an arched bow, he says. “It all started with the construction of the Farakka Barrage (that diverted Ganga water to the Bhagirathi-Hoogly river system from 1975). Mother Ganga is pleading with us to let her flow,” he adds.

As a boat carrying about 30 people approaches the opposite bank, Khidir points out that the land, which was earlier a part of West Bengal, now falls under Jharkhand. Paranpur Palasgachi was earlier part of Kaliachak II block of Malda district, until the river changed its course in the early1960s and the area was submerged, displacing thousands of people. By the time the land resurfaced about a decade later, the river had moved eastward, but the people moved back. This resurfaced area now falls under the Rajmahal Assembly segment of Sahibganj district of Jharkhand. Years later, the administration of Bihar (now Jharkhand) provided voting rights to them.

Though separated from West Bengal by the river, the people prefer to visit Malda for making big household purchases and medical emergencies. Akel Ali, a resident, feels that the village should become part of West Bengal. “The people of Jharkhand are different from us, and we have to speak Hindi here,” he says.

They have another problem: “Political parties here say that we are Bangladeshi infiltrators,” says Abdul Gaffar, while on the boat to Malda. “We did not leave our land. This is what river erosion did — it changed the landscape,” explains Gaffar.

Kalyan Rudra, chairperson of the West Bengal Pollution Control Board and author of the book Rivers of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta, says that on the map of Malda, it can be seen that the river formed a mighty bend between Manikchak and Farakka Barrage. “More than 200 sq. km has been eroded along the left bank of the river,” he says.

Experts say that the sediment deposition is leading to the emergence of chars in Malda. The river is eroding the left bank in the district, and the relatively sediment-free water downstream Farakka is eroding the right bank in Murshidabad, and in both these cases, West Bengal is losing land. As the land is lost and agricultural land denuded, people continue to move out of the State to look for work.

For the past few years, Box and his friend, Torikul Islam, have been raising issues regarding river erosion under the banner of the Ganga Bhangan Pratirodh Action Nagarik Committee. The committee has issued an open letter to candidates contesting the Lok Sabha elections, demanding that the people affected by river erosion be compensated, and that the areas of West Bengal that now fall under the administrative control of Jharkhand be brought back to the State. The committee also opposes the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), as well as subsequent Rules, as both Tarikul and Box feel that the problem of erosion has left people vulnerable, and that the CAA will increase their sense of anxiety.

The river becomes political

River erosion and the issue of migration are being raised by candidates in their own way. Trinamool Congress candidate from Malda Dakshin Shahnawaz Ali Rehan, who is also a PhD scholar at Oxford University, says the construction of the Farakka Barrage was wrongly done; it obstructed the river, leading to the problem of erosion. Located about 300 km north of Kolkata, the project was implemented to facilitate an agreement on the sharing of Ganga water between India and Bangladesh.

The TMC candidate, who hails from Kaliachak in Malda, says that the Central government and the FBP should take a more proactive role in addressing the problem of erosion.

Sreerupa Mitra Chowhury, the BJP MLA from English Bazar in Malda, feels only the BJP can address the issue of erosion and says though river water is part of the National Waterways, the land belongs to West Bengal.

The Left-Front-supported Congress candidate, Isha Khan Choudhury, is contesting the Malda Dakshin seat, which his father had represented since 2006. Chowdhury, who is the nephew of veteran Congress leader A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury, says his father brought in funds worth ₹250 crore for erosion protection work in the area.

Four seats across Malda and Murshidabad district (Malda Uttar, Malda Dakshin, Jangipur, and Murshidabad) will go to the polls on May 7, while Baharampur will go to polls on May 13. Political heavyweights are contesting the seats, including Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury from Baharampur and the CPI(M)’s Mohammad Salim from Murshidabad. There are several beedi barons in the poll fray as well, such as Khalilur Rahaman of the Trinamool, and the sitting Jangipur MP, who owns Nur Beedi.

It is a common sight to see the women of Malda district rolling beedis.
| Photo Credit:
SHIV SAHAY SINGH

While the issues of the beedi industry, particularly low wages (₹180 for rolling 1,000 beedis), and the health hazards are not headlining the poll campaign, migration of workers is an issue that is hard to ignore by political parties.

Women left behind

Downstream from Malda at Shamsherganj in Murshidabad district, the river is eroding and a large part of Dhuliyan municipality has been lost. Sandbags have been placed along the bank to save what’s left; large areas of the town have already caved in.

A few metres away from the densely populated market, a narrow alley goes past a closed CPI(M) party office, which has a poster of Congress candidate Chowdhury. School-going girls from Classes V to X bring out their little baskets with tobacco and kendu leaves in the narrow space outside their homes to roll beedis. Men in their early 20s who have dropped out from school and working in different parts of the country have returned home for Id, and are gathered outside Sahebnagar Uccha Vidyalaya, making plans of their return to work.

At the end of the alley, the river suddenly emerges in the heart of town. The devastation it had wrecked in 2022, when there was a major erosion, is evident at Pratapganj. Houses hang on the riverbank, and a part of the road which had caved in almost 18 months ago has still not been repaired.

Nasim Ali and Mohammed Hasan, both in Class X, are making Instagram reels along the riverbank. They are from a village about 1 km away, and say that with the river in the background, their reels will get more hits. The locals at Pratapganj loudly complain that their locality has become a site for disaster tourism.

At Pratapganj Primary School, 35 families affected by river erosion live in the school, four families to a classroom. The State government has allocated them land at Laskarpur, but the people have refused to vacate the school premises. As dusk descends, Chumki Sarkar and her mother-in-law, Rekha Sarkar, join the five others who are rolling beedis in the school compound.

“We do not want to go to Laskarpur. The place is inhabited by people from another community,” says Chumki Sarkar, referring to the predominantly Muslim neighbourhood. Rekha feels that women will not feel safe in that neighbourhood after the men go to other States to work.

The local Trinamool leader, Satyam Sarkar, who stays in the same neighbourhood, claims he is under a lot of pressure to vacate the school before the elections. “They are all locals. How can we force them?” he says. Asked why school-going girls receiving the State government Kanyashree scholarships are rolling beedis, Sarkar shrugs: “You know how things are in Malda and Murshidabad. Every woman rolls beedis here.”

Schoolgirls rolling beedis at Dhuliyan town in Murshidabad.
| Photo Credit:
SHIV SAHAY SINGH

The National Family Health Survey 5 points out high instances of child marriage in both Malda and Murshidabad. In Malda, 49.1% of women in the 20-24 age group were married before they turned 18, while in Murshidabad, that number went up to 55.4 %, one of the highest in the country. The literacy rate of women in Murshidabad as per NFHS-5 stands at 67.6%, and women with 10 or more years of schooling stands at 24.2%. In Malda, the female literacy rate stands at 72.3% and those with 10 or more years of schooling stands at 30%.

Political unwillingness

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claims that her government has brought migrants under the ambit of the State government’s Swasthya Sathi Health Insurance scheme, whereas the BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari highlights the poor economic condition of the place, saying that the youth are going to work in BJP-ruled States. The State government has set up the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board, which enlisted about 21 lakh migrant workers in the State by November 2023.

In the heart of Baharampur town, Matiur Rahaman, 42, runs an NGO, Karna Subarna Welfare Society, which tries to reach out to migrant workers stuck in foreign countries. Rahaman says that when he approaches politicians across political lines for issues of migrant workers, they do not show any interest. According to Rahaman, about four lakh people have registered as migrant workers in Duare Sarkar camps (for the doorstep delivery of schemes) by the West Bengal government in Murshidabad district alone. He had written a letter to the Election Commission of India on April 20 to allow migrants to vote from wherever they are stationed, but he got no response.

“Migrant workers are not concerned about the elections. They are still catching trains from different stations to leave for other States,” he says. To prove his claim, Rahaman calls up Subhajit Tudu, a migrant worker, who disconnects the phone after hurriedly telling him that he is at Satragachi station (near Kolkata) to take a train to Kerala.