People's Democracy

LF Dharna For Action To End

Erosion in Ganga Padma River

SCORES of Left Front MPs and others, along with MLAs and senior leaders from Bengal held a dharna near the Parliament on March 11 to focus their demand of urgent action on the part of the central government to end the decade old erosion problem in the Ganga-Padma river, which is now assuming serious dimensions. The dharna had three immediate demands from the government:

• declare Ganga-Padma erosion as a national problem
• set up an appropriate mechanism to deal with the problem; and
• allocate adequate resources.

Speaking at the dharna, former prime minister Deve Gowda said that this was a serious problem which needed immediate attention of the central government. The CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee detailed the hazards of the erosion, its ramifications for not only the state of Bengal but also for the nation’s territorial integrity. CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and Left Front chairman, Biman Basu called upon the people of the state to be ready for waging a determined struggle on the issue.

Later on a memo was submitted to the deputy prime minister L K Advani detailing the problem and the demands to end it.

The letter was signed by signed by Left Front MPs from West Bengal - Somnath Chatterjee, Moinul Hassan, Mahboob Zahedi, Abul Hasnat Khan, Lakshman Seth, Rupchand Pal and Manoj Bhattacharya.

Over the past two or three decades, the entire 116 km long western stretch of the Ganga-Padma river system in the Malda, Murshidabad and Nadia districts, has witnessed unprecedented erosion. The consequences have been devastating.

Each year, more than thousand households have been destroyed and the occupants have been rendered homeless. Taken together with the annual loss of thousands of hectares of valuable agricultural land, river erosion has had a severe impact on the livelihood of the people living in these predominantly rural districts.

River erosion is certain to have an adverse impact on international affairs as well. Most of the land lost on the western (Indian) side has tended to reapper on the eastern (Bangladesh) side.  Since the land and river boundaries are changing rapidly, there is every likelihood of loss of territory to a foreign country with concomitant effects on national sovereignty and peaceful co-existence with the neighouring countries.

Perhaps the most severe impact of continued erosion will have on the Farakka Barrage itself. The Ganga, the Kalindi-Mahananda and the Bhagirathi channels are now scarcely a kilometer apart and there is little doubt that if unchecked, this process may cause the entire Barrage to be bypassed, both from the upstream and the downstream sides. Were this to happen, the impact on the well-being of the entire state would be catastrophic.

The memorandum states that the state government has tried to address the issue by taking up a number of works to arrest erosion. Within its limited resource base, it has tried to accommodate the most critical anti-erosion activities. However, the scale and nature of the problem is simply too large. It is a national problem with critical international ramifications and ought to be treated as such, stated the MPs.