The hungry river in West Bengal eats up homes overnight

Villages in Malda and Murshidabad districts live under the constant threat of river erosion.

Lalpur in West Bengal was badly eroded in October 2021. Thirty-six families became homeless when a 300-metre long road and six houses were washed away. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

The Ganga enters West Bengal in Malda district, from where it goes to Murshidabad district before splitting into two: the Bhagirathi, which flows south through West Bengal, and the Padma, which flows east into Bangladesh. Although part of a richly fertile deltaic network, the riverbanks in Malda and Murshidabad are also prone to erosion. Every year, during the monsoons, the river swallows up villages and agricultural land, leaving hundreds of families homeless overnight. While the displaced men usually migrate to States such as Kerala or Maharashtra to find jobs as daily labour, women are left behind to run the families on their meagre incomes and the little money that is sent home by their husbands.

Kaima Bawa, 50, stands inside the room of a dangling house in Lalpur, West Bengal in October 2021. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

A mother and her child stare at the destruction caused by the river. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

The women often take up beedi (hand-rolled cigarettes) binding, an occupation potentially injurious to health. Children drop out of school to support families and become part of the country’s invisible army of child labour.

Juli Bibi, 33, and her son pose for a photo in a bamboo-enclosed makeshift shelter dangerously close to the progressing river. She lost her home to the Ganga in 2021. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

A temporary sandbank created in the erosion-affected area of Birnagar village in October 2021. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

Although the erosion and flooding have largely been annual natural disasters, local people and experts are of the opinion that the destruction has been exacerbated by the Farakka Barrage on the Ganga, which falls in Murshidabad district and has been operational since 1975. The barrage was commissioned to flush out sediment deposits from Kolkata Port and revive it. While it failed to do this satisfactorily, it did disturb the natural flow of the Ganga, whose landbanks now began to collapse under the force of water in the barrage. The obstruction also causes the river to find recourse through adjacent riverine villages: high lands have been converted to low-lying riverbeds in the last five decades, wreaking havoc.

The Department of Irrigation tries to curb river erosion with sandbags in Dhuliyan in October 2021. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

A partially submerged mosque in Lalutola. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

The Farakka Barrage is one of the prime examples of what development projects undertaken without thought to ecological costs can do to the environment and to the people. In adjacent Bangladesh, the diversion has reportedly hindered navigation, led to a decline in fish population, and made deserts out of erstwhile fertile lands, besides posing a constant threat to human and animal life because of the frequent floods.

Around 400 families became homeless when a portion of Lalutola village was eroded within 10 hours in 2021. People were forced to take refuge in makeshift shelters beside the river. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

Niren Ghosh, 70, was abandoned by his son after the river destroyed their property in October 2021. His son shifted elsewhere with all the belongings, leaving him stranded in a makeshift shelter. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

I was in some villages of West Bengal like Lalpur, Dhuliyan, Lalutola, Gendharitola, and Birnagar in October 2021, when the monsoons were just over. These villages are mostly populated by lower-income groups, where the men are daily wage-earners or small-scale farmers. They have nowhere to go once the river eats up their homes: they usually take refuge in makeshift tarpaulin tents distributed by the local panchayat and keep moving with the changing riverbank. The people whose homes are partially damaged often remain there until the river claims them fully. The lucky ones find a place in the nearest school buildings and survive on dry food distributed by the local administration.

Children of Lalutola village lost their school to the erosion in September 2021. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

Even the well-off suffer—they lose fields, bamboo groves, and mango orchards to the erosion. But they have the advantage of being able to move away from the river and buy new property; they often cut and sell the trees in their gardens before the monsoon, empty their concrete houses, even carrying away the bricks to build a new home elsewhere.

A woman and a child try to salvage bricks from a destroyed house in October 2021. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

A partially destroyed house on the bank of the Ganga. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

The response of the government’s irrigation department has invariably been to dump sandbags along the banks. It holds back the river temporarily, but another village in the area gets submerged.

An abandoned bathroom in a stranded property beside the progressing river. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

Children fish standing on the remnants of a house eroded in July 2021. | Photo Credit: Sudip Maiti 

Each year the problem returns, and thus far no permanent solution has been found.

Sudip Maiti is a professional photographer exploring the intersections of mythology, climate change, the environment, and human relationships with the wild.