Notes of Neglect.

It has been happening forever- whenever there is a problem, the silent and almost invariably, the innocent has to suffer the most. Until, of course, nature turns nemesis. And when a city with an area of just a little over 500 square kilometres has to house a population of over a million, there is a problem. A big one at that. Resources are pushed to a catastrophic  hilt till finally everything starts to fall apart and threatens to engulf with it all that ever was- the bubble of growth, the façade of modernization and the pretense of development.

Guwahati is a town in evolution. From a small sleepy town of the 80s to the hub of trade and commerce of North East India that it is today, the transformation has been drastic and very palpable.The Chief Minister would proudly add that it is, in fact, the 5^th fastest growing city in the country. The development is encouraging and has actually opened up a world of avenues in the city with international retail chains setting shops everywhere in the city. Very impressive indeed for a place where the waters of the great river that flows through it, had for so long, reeked of neglect and from the rest of the country

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But almost ironically, Deepor Beel, an abandoned channel of the might river itself and a wetland of immense significance for the city stinks of apathy from its own people now. An unexpected population explosion and its ugly aftermath have taken its toll on the lone Ramsar site of the state and the consequences are for all to be seen and felt today. A very dangerous development for the city that has been ,over the past decade or so, moving a tad too fast.

Beel means a wetland or a large aquatic body in Assamese and Deepor Beel is one of the largest and most important riverine wetlands in Assam's Brahmaputra valley and is representative of the wetlands found within the Burma Monsoon Forest biogeographic region. Spread over an area of 41.4 square kilometeres with varying depths of 4 meteres to 1 metre, this freshwater wetland is home to a diverse range of flora and fauna. The fauna here includes many an International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red listed species such as the Spot-billed Pelican ,the  Baers Pochard , the  Lesser Adjutant Stork , the  Pallas’s Sea Eagle, the Slender-billed Vulture , the Ferruginous Duck , the Greater Adjutant Stork ,the Asiatic Elephant ,the  Irriwaddy Squirrel, and the Hoolock Gibbon. Deepor Beel also happens to be one of the largest staging sites for migratory birds in India and a winter morning here is any avian fauna enthusiast’s dream or at least, used to be.

A dump yard right next to Deepor Beel

The Beel, bluntly put, is in shambles today. Reduced to a dump yard of a callous city, the filth in the lake cuts a pathetic picture.  A newly constructed railroad, along the southern  boundary of Deepor Beel, fragments the two previously dependent ecosystems, Deepor Beel and Rani/ Garbhanga Reserved Forests,  a development  that could spell disaster for the already much abused wetland. Unplanned and non-regulated fishing practices are making things worse. And to top it all, since the city has no space left , industrial and residential developments are starting to proliferate a little too close to the wetland. And as for the mayhem we as a species are capable of inflicting on nature, the lesser  said or written about it, the better it is .With humans at action, poaching and soil cutting within the wetland have also become rampantly common.

Deepor Beel is dying a slow and painful death. What is even sadder is that it will probably fade off noiselessly without the rest of the country ever having known of its existence, like so many other things in the state of Assam. The helpless pleas of the Beel for some attention have, for long, muffled by the bombs and grenades of the ULFA and the NDFB for perhaps, that is what we, as a race wanted the world to know and acknowledge us for. And now, beneath the comatose splendor of showrooms of designer labels and the sleek interiors of multi cuisine restaurants, what is actually ours is suffering under the heartless indifference of its own people.  If the Beel is to die, which it will in the present scheme of things, the blotch of apathy and ungratefulness on the collective consciousness of the state would stay with us to haunt us forever.   The Beel has to be saved, for it is indispensable to our existence as a state and more importantly, as a part of Mother Nature.