In 1988, I left Singerband, a village on the southern bank of the river Barak in south Assam where I was born, to pursue my higher studies. But I carried with me all the playful boyhood memories. My friends in the village and I grew up playing on the sand bars of the river banks, taking baths, and learning to swim in the river. I spent the best of my teen days rowing country boats in the river with my friends.

Our parents had difficult times calling us out of the river. We caught fish and collected snails and mussels from the river. Another fun thing was to catch the driftwoods and bamboos during the floods. One of the most exciting events was watching the boat race in the Barak organised by the village elders every October.

The river was the soul of the village life – from birth to death, everything we did was centred round the river. It was truly a riverine life!

Villagers used the water of the Barak for all purposes. We washed clothes on the river banks, fetched water for cooking and drinking, and irrigated our farms. Those days, almost all the villagers would go for open defecation on the river banks with strict adherence to the written rule, one must take a bath every time after defecation. As such, most of us used to take baths twice or thrice a day in the river.

The river banks were also the sites of last rites with the cremation of the dead. Thus, we grew up weaving a very close relationship with the river and inseparably so until we came of age.

I returned to my birthplace after spending 30 years of working life in various places. Not that I had lost touch with my village. I kept coming to Singerband at least once a year and closely observed the gradual change in the way of life and lifestyle of the village communities.

One good thing about Singerband was that it was known ‘as an educated village’ with a nearly hundred per cent literate population. And thus, it had all the potential to become a model village. It began to receive some ‘development benefits’ like piped water supply, construction of pucca toilets, etc.

By the early 1980s, water pipelines reached the village. Water taps were installed at specific points on the roadside. All of us were happy to have access to safe drinking water. In 2016, our village became further ‘developed’. Almost every household got connected to tap water supplies and had access to electricity. Most of the households also boasted of having constructed toilets and bathrooms. Of course, some households couldn’t afford tap water connections, toilets, and bathrooms; they were considered poor and ‘underdeveloped’ and still perceived as such even today.

The improvement of basic amenities, especially availability of drinking water at the doorstep in almost all the houses, has certainly lessened the daily drudgery, especially for women. But in the process, something else has changed. The intimate relationship with the river Barak! It appears the river has also changed – it has become unpredictable.

Originating in the area of Puliebudze bordering the highlands of Manipur and Nagaland, the Barak traverses a long distance (about 530 km) through Manipur, and southern Assam till it enters Bangladesh at Bhanga, in the border district of Karimganj in India. Along the way, it is joined by several tributaries from Manipur, North Cachar Hills, and Mizoram. At Tipaimukh in the southwestern sub-division of Churachandpur district of Manipur, the Barak is joined by Tuivai, the north-flowing river of Mizoram, and takes a u-turn before it enters the plains of southern Assam. Its rich riverine ecosystem and biodiversity support an array of aquatic life and the diverse livelihoods of the various communities settled across the Barak basin.

However, in pursuit of the so-called modern ‘development’, one could notice a tendency among the younger generations to undermine the traditional nature-based lifestyle and adopt an acquisitive material culture, irrespective of its impact on human well-being and the natural environment.

One thing that struck me was that all the playful activities around the river had disappeared. Villagers did not seem to have much use of the river now – they hardly go to the river for taking a bath or washing the clothes. Since most households also now have cooking gas, except a very few poor households, no one collects driftwoods or floating bamboo from the river when it is in spate. Villagers also feel that children are safer without having to go to the river. The number of people going to the river declined, day by day. Now, only a few fishermen’s families depend on the river Barak for livelihood. Villagers no longer maintain and clean the footpaths from their houses to the river. I also observe that no children play in the river. These days, children of our village do not learn swimming or boat rowing, which are essential life-skills we had learned earlier. Instead, children seem to have developed a fear for the river and open water bodies. I wonder whether we will have to construct swimming pools with all safety measures to teach children how to swim as part of our village ‘development’!

I felt something has gone out of our lives forever!

However one positive thing has happened – open defecation on the river banks has stopped! But do the villagers share this feeling of loss? I wanted to understand what the village elders think of the change and the ‘development’ that has come to Singerband.

“The river was then about 300-500 metres away from current settlement areas and the present PWD road. The width of the river was around 150 metres, but it was much deeper. Even in winter, one had to swim or get into a boat to cross the river; these days, one can just walk across the river,” recalled 70-year-old Nadiachand.

He said, “Every year seasonal floods would inundate the river banks and leave the soil fertile with nutrient-rich sediments. Villagers would then cultivate winter crops – potato, black dal, pumpkin, sugarcane, beans, etc., – on the river bank and get a good harvest.”

The village was dotted with all kinds of fruit trees like guava, mango, jackfruit, tamarind, jujube, banana, papaya, black palm, orange, lemon, and patches of natural forest of native trees – leihao, cham, chingsu, wang, ramdala, kadam, tera, rata, puma, segun, tairen, khongnang. Besides, thatch, cane, and bamboo were found abundantly around the village. The forest was so thick along the river banks that elders never allowed children to go to the river alone as there were wild animals and reptiles in the area. Everyone in the village had enough to eat and share with the neighbours. The villagers could access the forest commons, especially timber and thatch, to construct houses and other household furniture. Over the decades, all those forests got depleted due to overuse by people of the village, while parts of the forest were lost to the river bank erosion.

“In my lifetime,” 78-year-old Kesho said, “I never heard people in our village talking about conservation and plantation. Now, as you know, our village stands on the edge of the river. Every year few houses are forced to shift to new locations due to the threat of riverbank erosion. Hundreds of acres of land have already been devoured by the river in the past decades. Also, villagers are left with minimal land on the river bank to grow vegetables. So is the paucity of land for relocation of erosion affected families. In fact, they are being rehabilitated on parts of the farmland, which eventually will have an adverse impact on food security”.

Nadiachand concurred, “Boat was a major mode of transportation for the riverside villages. So, every household had at least one boat. During my childhood, I have seen boatmen carrying traders and farmers of the riparian communities of downstream villages from Sonai to Singerband to the market at Lakhipur that sat twice a week. Similarly, farmers and villagers of Tipaimukh and other riverside villages travelled to Lakhipur by boat to sell their produces and purchase their required items from the weekly market.

Nadiachand said that he was quite optimistic about the Government of India’s recent initiative to restart the historical trade route. “I heard that the Government of India declared the the Barak as the National Waterways 16, and it plans to develop a 121 km stretch of waterways from Bhanga (Karimganj) to Lakhipur by dredging the river for better navigation” he said.

Kesho said, “As young men, my friends and I used to go uzan (meaning upstream) to forage. Uzan is a 104 km stretch of the river Barak, starting from Alini in Assam to Tipaimukh in Manipur. We used the country boat to reach uzan. In those days, almost 30 per cent of our village youth would travel upstream in the winter season. Whenever there were individual or community needs for any forest products – cane, bamboo, woods, thatch, banana leaf, etc. – for construction of shelter sheds, community halls, or community functions, we used to go for foraging in uzan. Those days, bamboo, woods, cane, thatched were found abundantly on the river banks. We did not need to walk inside the forest to get what we needed. Since bamboo, trees, canes were felled in small quantity for household and village consumption, tribal villagers never denied its access.”

While we were talking about bamboo, Mutum Rabindra, 62, joined the conversation. He was involved in the timber and bamboo trade during the years 1995-2005. Initially, he used to supply bamboo to the Cachar Paper Mill. He said, “Large-scale deforestation started when the locals and the traders commercialised forest products, which were traded through the Barak river. Felled logs and bamboos were made into rafts and sent afloat till Fulertal, Lakhipur, Baskandi, Silchar and Karimganj. From these small towns/ markets, timbers and bamboos were transported further to other destinations by road.

Such illegal felling of trees and trading of forest products led to irreversible damage to the natural forest. State and non-state stakeholders were involved in the illegal trade. Since the nexus was powerful, nobody from the area could raise the issue.

The Cachar Paper Mill, set up in 1988, triggered large scale deforestation in the upstream river catchment areas. Thousands of truckloads of bamboo have gone into the paper mill. I checked and found that the annual production capacity of the mill was 1 lakh tonnes, and there were years in which more than full capacity was produced. The rate of deforestation slowed down from 1996, after the Supreme Court of India’s verdict on the petition of T. N. Godavarman, banning logging across the country.

However, Rabindra said, “The illegal trade of bamboo and timber persists till today. I left my business because small traders like me can’t sustain. Only big traders, who had both administrative and political connections can stay and flourish in the trade.” While narrating his experience of uzan, he said, “I had to travel 3 km to 5 km on foot or even more from the river bank to get bamboos and timber. That suggests the scale of extraction of timber and bamboo along the river”.

Kesho said, “Jhum farming in hills was also one of the major causes of deforestation.” I argued jhum was a traditional and natural way of farming. If the jhum cycle is longer, jhum is sustainable and does not cause large scale deforestation. However, he persisted that jhum was the major cause of deforestation.

They thought large scale deforestation created environmental hazards such as landslides and erosion in the upstream, causing siltation and raising the river bed. As a result, over the decades, during the rainy season, larger areas get inundated. “We see the impact in the form of riverbank erosion at Singerband village,” they said.

Thambalangou sat down enthusiastically to tell his story. “Like many others, I started fishing in the Barak from my childhood. Fishing has been a major source of my livelihood. I saw hundreds of varieties of fish and other species – crocodile, dolphin, tortoise, etc. The biggest fish I caught from this river in my life was a ngaren fish that weighed 65 kg! I also caught many varieties of fish. When I was young, I also saw a huge tortoise pulled out of the Barak that weighed more than 40 kg. Those days, we followed ethical fishing. For example, if fingerlings of any variety were caught, we would immediately release them in the river.”

Bamcha nodded in affirmation. “Fish were found in abundance in the Barak, so much so that it was difficult for us to sell all our catch in the village.” Enterprising traders used to visit fishermen’s houses to buy fish, which they then sold in the local markets at Lakhipur, Binnakandi, and Fulertal. He said: “The daily catch of fish was sufficient for a family to earn a sustainable income. Many fishermen of Singerband who wanted more income would go upstream up to Tipaimukh for fishing. They carried with them bamboo cages and hooks to let the fish stay alive in the water inside the cages so that they could sell their catch fresh and get a better price after their return.”

Also, Mozir Uddin added, the fish diversity was more in the uzan part of the river. However, in the last two decades, he observed a sharp decline in fish population and the number of varieties. “We do not see many fish varieties now, and therefore, fishing as a livelihood in Barak is no longer sustainable,” he said.

But why did this happen?

Both Bamcha and Thambalangou spoke of unethical practices

among the fisher folks. “Fishing is indiscriminate now. They employ all kinds of means – use of different sizes of fishing nets, hooks, dynamite, poison, etc., to catch fish, irrespective of their size. They don’t leave even the fingerlings and smallest fish if caught. All these were responsible for the gradual depletion of fish and its varieties.

Raised river beds due to siltation might also be another factor responsible for destroying fish habitats, they felt.

The survey also pointed out that “no breeding ground of mahseer was recorded in the main course of the rivers”, sending out alarms that these iconic mahseer species are now “on the threshold of extinction.”

The so-called development-induced and anthropogenic factors – dams, barrages, irrigation structures, river bed mining for sand and stone chips, forest degradation due to logging as well as unscientific fishing – hastened to catastrophic changes in the riverine ecosystem, aquatic life, and diversity due to destruction of habitats.

The balance between development and environmental conservation and protection is vital for sustainable life and living, elders say. Thokchom Biswanath (60), and Keisam Champalal (63), averred, “While we all need ‘development’, we shouldn’t also lose sight of the non-financial cost of  ‘development’, like the ecological cost and social cost.” Citing a couple of examples, Biswanath pointed out that infrastructure development, like railway construction and highways connecting the Barak region and Manipur, setting up the industry (Cachar paper mill), etc., are extremely important. But all these have contributed to irreparable damage to forests, biodiversity, environmental degradation, and hazards like landslides and soil erosion. Sediment laden waters from various streams and rivulets fall into the river Barak, causing heavy siltation.

He added, “We have also come to know of the 1,500 mw hydropower project on the Barak to be implemented by the North East Electric Power Corporation Ltd. (NEEPCO). As per the project, a 163metres high dam would be built at the confluence of the Barak and Tuivai at Tipaimukh to produce electricity and control floods in the plains. There is also a proposal for oil exploration in Manipur. If implemented without considering environmental and social impact upstream and downstream of the project sites, these ‘development’ projects would have severe consequences on the river Barak and its ecosystem.”

Besides these, there is the issue of river pollution. It is common knowledge that all household sewage and urban wastes of most towns like Lakhipur, Fulertal and Jirighat get drained into the Barak. “Its water is now unfit for human use,” Champalal said. “When I was young, the colour of the water was deep blue, and anyone could drink the water of the Barak without filtering. Now we find all kinds of waste like plastic bags, plastic bottles, and animal carcasses floating in the flowing water. Increased use of fertiliser and pesticides in our farms further contaminated the water.”

Having compiled the collective memories of the elders of Singerband and the gist of conversations with villagers, we sat together one evening to discuss the draft narrative of our village and invited their concluding comments to finalise the story. In a way, it was a joint exercise to revisit the past to understand the present situation of Singerband, and reflect on our future actions.

The reflections of the elders were remarkable and illuminating as they offered their final view:

(a) We didn’t realise how we got detached from the river, the nature

 and its rich resources in our mindless pursuit of modern ‘development’ and material comfort.

(b) We have only exploited the river and its resources and never

thought of its conservation, and sustainable use.

(c) We have taken the river and nature for granted.

(d) We thought nature would continue to bestow on us the way it had been doing for centuries.

(e) We come to realise that nature too, if not nurtured, conserved and protected, has its limitations and ceases to provide for us.

(f) We may have become ‘developed’, educated and rich financially but, we are now much poorer in terms of biodiversity and planetary health, and finally, we thought money and market would provide everything we need for our survival. But, in this time of COVID-19 pandemic, we realised that money and the market could do little to ensure the safety of the human race. On the contrary, Mother Nature, if we took care of her – conserved and protected – would continue to support human life, along with other living and non-living creatures!

It was indeed heartening to see that people, though small in number, are beginning to think about mindless exploitation of natural resources and destruction of life-supporting ecosystems in the name of so-called ‘progress’ and ‘development’. Recently, the Government of India initiated a national waterways development programme to improve the country’s inland waterways infrastructure for promoting trade, commerce, travel, and tourism. The Barak has been identified as the 16 National Waterways for restoration of the traditional trade and transport route.

A stretch of 121 km between Bhanga (Karimganj) and Lakhipur (Cachar) of the river Barak will be made navigable by dredging the river bed. Once operational, the water route would connect all the important port networks and facilitate access to the Bay of Bengal through Chittagong and other ports in Bangladesh. Though this waterways development initiative opens up economic opportunities in trade, travel, and tourism, the impact of infrastructure development, for example, dredging of river beds to ensure smooth navigability, on river behaviour and ecology cannot be undermined. It is expected that a comprehensive environmental impact assessment would be carried out, and such measures are taken to minimise risks. I am also hopeful that once the waterway starts functioning, it would provide economic opportunities for the riparian communities.