What would you do if you see all that you had in life, sinking right in front of you? Ghoramara, an island located in the sensitive Sunderbans delta complex of the Bay of Bengal, has earned the stark sobriquet of ‘sinking island’.
Once spanning 20 sq km, Ghoramara has been reduced to just five sq km. “Over the last two decades I’ve lost three acres of cultivable land to the Muriganga river and had to shift home four times. There has been no resettlement initiative from the government,” says Anwara Bibi, 30, a resident of Nimtala village in the island. Global warming has caused the river, which descends from the mighty Himalayas and empties into the Bay of Bengal, to swell. High tides and floods are playing havoc on the fragile embankment, displacing hundreds of islanders. “Most men have migrated to work on construction sites in the southern parts of India,” says Sanjeev Sagar, panchayat pradhan of Ghoramara.
Over 600 families have been displaced in the last three decades, leaving behind 5,000-odd residents struggling with the harsh monsoons every year.
“A large-scale mangrove plantation could prevent tidal erosion. With every high tide a part of the island is washed away,” says Sugata Hazra, professor, School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University. Only those without the means to migrate are left on this island. A recent independent research by the School of Oceanographic Studies has estimated that 15 per cent of Sunderbans would sink by 2020, with the possibility of Ghoramara disappearing from the map.
Amidst such existential crisis, it is not surprising that issues such as education are being neglected. “The nearest senior secondary school is across the river at Kakdwip. A more practical way for sustenance is leaving the island in search of work,” says Sourav Dolui, 16, a Std IX student at the Ghoramara Milan Bidyapeeth.
(This is an excerpt from ‘The Hungry Tide’, an ongoing documentation of the last inhabitants of the sinking island Ghoramara.)
Swastik Palis a Kolkata-based documentary photographer