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Erosion: A crisis Assam can’t ignore
Illegally occupied land can be reclaimed anytime. But land eroded by rivers—particularly the mighty Brahmaputra—is lost forever. Since 1950, over 4.5 lakh hectares of land in Assam have been swallowed by the river, with an average annual loss of 8,000 hectares. Assam, a small state to begin with, is shrinking with each passing year. And yet, public awareness remains alarmingly low.
It pains me to witness our fertile land vanish into the river in the blink of an eye. We, the people of Assam, still fail to grasp the true value of our land.
Back in the 1950s, Dibrugarh was saved from a similar fate through robust measures; like stone and wooden spars, steel-netted boulders placed on the banks, and by constructing impermeable embankments. These time-tested methods worked. Today, areas like Maijan are under severe threat, but we're resorting to ineffective solutions like geo-bags, which are no match for the Brahmaputra’s powerful undercurrents. Had Assam consistently adopted the Dibrugarh model over the past 75 years, much of our riverbank could have been preserved. It's time we stop treating erosion as a seasonal inconvenience and start seeing it for what it is—a permanent, irreversible loss.
Let us act before we lose any more of Assam to the river.
Prafulla Dowarah
Guwahati
The Files
The Kashmir Files which depicted the true story of atrocities committed over the Kashmiri Pandits by the Islamic terrorists forcing mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from their homeland was faced lots of legal hurdles for its release in India, now yet another film named THE BENGAL FILES depicting the true story of atrocities committed upon the Bengali Hindus during the Bengal partition period is also facing the legal hurdles from West Bengal government. Who knows God forbid by tomorrow another file by the name ‘Assam Files’ is produced, depicting the true story of atrocities committed upon the indigenous Asomiyas by the ‘naasomiyas’ (according to Dr. Hiren Gohain’s dictionary) will be ready for release but facing stiff hurdles from the famous ‘3 Gogois’. That film too would face lots of backlashes from certain ecosystem.
Dr Ashim chowdhury,
Guwahati.