After Amphan and coronavirus lockdown, residents of Sundarbans struggle for a livelihood

“My son and I were home the morning when Amphan arrived—gushing torrents of rain followed by gusts of winds,” Bhaba Shankar Patra, an elderly resident of G-Plot—an island in the Patharpratima block of the Sundarbans—said on 7 June. Bhaba was recounting the events of 20 May, when Cyclone Amphan swept West Bengal and ravaged the deltaic mangrove forest region of Sundarbans. “We were perched atop our hut, trying to save the roof. But we couldn’t withstand the storm’s fury for more than two hours. As our tiles and walls were swept away by the winds, we saw sheets of asbestos flying in the distance, like birds,” he said. The family sought refuge at a neighbour’s pucca house, made of permanent materials. “We lost everything we had,” Bhaba said. “Everything, except what we are wearing,” he added, while gesturing to the clothes—a lungi and a gamcha, a bath towel—he was wearing and the sari that his wife Kajal Patra, who was standing next to him, had draped. 

Kajal listed all that they had lost to the cyclone. A crop of ripened paddy on their small farm, on whose seeds they had spent Rs 2,100, and from which they could have earned enough to feed the family for a good three months. Their hut, on whose reconstruction they had spent Rs 60,000 a couple of years after it was damaged by Cyclone Aila in 2009. Their cowshed, re-constructed only last year after it was damaged by Cyclone Bulbul in 2017. Their sole cow, which was in the shed, and was crushed under the weight of the cowshed when it was pulled down by the torrential winds. Vegetables in their kitchen garden, which would have been sufficient for them and a few other families for almost a month. And all their belongings, including a bed and a couple of steel trunks that were battered by collapsing walls, under a caved-in roof.  

The Patras were among several residents in the Amphan-hit areas of Sundarbans who told me how they had lost their livelihoods to the cyclone when I travelled through the South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas districts between 30 May and 9 June. Residents said that they did not expect much assistance from the government as it had not even carried out a comprehensive assessment of their losses to provide them with compensation. Many of them had pinned their hopes on the upcoming monsoon season, which would bring in some income from agricultural activities. It seemed that the residents of Sundarbans were faced with the challenge of rebuilding their lives, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, almost completely by themselves. 

Seventeen days after the cyclone hit G-Plot, its residents were busy taking their first gingerly steps towards recovery. That evening, in the island’s Krishnadaspur area, I saw several residents, including women and children, work to rebuild their homesteads—fixing tarpaulin sheets or clay tiles on broken roofs, repairing damaged mud walls, pumping out rotting, brackish water from ponds and farms that were lush with produce before Amphan struck. Others were ploughing fields from where the seawater had evaporated, preparing for the monsoon. Several residents were milling about on narrow, muddy pathways, fetching water from those tube wells that were still gurgling out sweet water, some buying fish seeds to sow in ponds purified hurriedly with bleaching powder, lime and potash only a day or two earlier. A few men were repairing a part of a mud embankment, located along the periphery of G-Plot, which had been washed away by the surging tides that had accompanied the cyclone. 

A stretch of the embankment, about nine hundred metres next to the broken section, was reinforced with bricks and concrete and topped with a wide road. As it had been constructed after Cyclone Aila, it was locally known as “Aila bandh.” Many villagers were walking or sitting along its length, mired in discussions or staring into the horizon, whereas groups of fishermen were repairing their nets and other equipment, preparing for their first voyage into the deep seas after a two-and-a-half-month hiatus on account of the nationwide lockdown to contain the novel coronavirus. 

When I asked people on the Aila bandh what they had lost to the cyclone or how much it was worth, most responded with a blank expression, followed by vivid accounts of how the cyclone pummelled away at everything in its path for close to twelve hours. They spoke of how the winds brought in swirls of salty seawater deep into the island, inundating large swathes, flattening or washing away homes, roads, electricity poles and high-tension towers, betel vines, and acres and acres of paddy and vegetables awaiting harvest once the lockdown was relaxed. 

Only some gave specific details about the losses they had personally endured. Like the Patras, Subhash Shitt, a fish farmer, said he had lost means to sustain himself due to the cyclone. “Seawater rose above the embankment and swept into my pond and all the Rohu, Katla and Sol fish in it died within two–three days,” he said, before adding that he had to throw away five crates full of fish. The cyclone had damaged the roof and walls of Shitt’s house, which was located along the embankment. When I spoke to him, he was reinforcing the periphery of a small pond adjacent to his house, which was flooded with rotting water. He estimated that it would cost him Rs 3,000 to pump out this water from the pond, an amount that he could ill afford. He said he hoped that the monsoon would herald better times. “At least, we can grow and eat some vegetables. All we eat now is rice and mashed potato,” he said.      

Many other farms and freshwater ponds across Patharpratima were still inundated with brackish water. Owners of five such ponds and farms said they did not have the means to pump out the water—like in other blocks I travelled to, electricity was yet to be restored, and they could not afford diesel-run pumps, running which cost Rs 50 per hour. They said it would cost them between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000 to clear out saltwater from their farms and ponds. They hoped that it would fill up with monsoon rains in the coming days, and gradually, begin producing crops and fish, providing families with much-needed sources of livelihood. 

Among them was Tapas Tikadar, a man in his mid-thirties from Krishnadaspur. “It’s impossible for us to arrange this amount under lockdown when no work is available,” he said. The cyclone had wrecked the mud walls and asbestos roof of his hut. When I met him, his family of four was living under a sheet of tarpaulin strung over the rickety frame of the roof, along one of the partially-damaged walls. Tikadar told me his family was surviving by doing odd jobs for richer villagers who lived in pucca houses. “We clear the debris off their compounds, clean up salinated ponds, re-construct broken sections of their houses. In return they give us food, and only sometimes, a little money,” he said. 

Due to low demand and restrictions on movement, people are not able to sell produce that they held on to during the lockdown. Rabindranath Das, a rice trader from G-Plot island, said he had been unable to buy paddy from his regular farmers as all rice mills in the area, where he used to sell the produce, were shut. “Even though many of them managed to save their stocks from the cyclone and are keen to sell it as the lockdown is being relaxed, I can’t buy it from them, as rice mills are unlikely to start operating anytime soon. Besides, there is an acute shortage of transport options,” he told me, over a choppy mobile connection on 13 June. 

Tarak Sardar, a tourist guide and resident of Basanti block in South 24-Parganas, told me that residents were looking at a grim future and struggling to find employment. “A large number of people here have small businesses in Kolkata, or work in shops and homes there. They have been unable to travel to the city or find work during the lockdown,” Sardar said. “Those who work on other’s farms in the islands are also in bad shape, as those residents who own land and have money—around ten out of every hundred people on an average—are not employing locals for fear of contracting the virus. Then there are shopkeepers, vehicle and boat owners, drivers, hotel staff and guides like me who are completely dependent on tourism for our livelihood. Although tourists were allowed to visit our area two days ago, none have turned [up] till now,” Sardar told me on 20 June.  

G-Plot was among the two islands I visited which does not feature in the government’s list of inhabited islands in the Indian Sundarbans. The other island, Sulkuni, located in the North 24 Parganas district’s Minakhan block, had also been severely hit by Amphan. 

Amphan had washed away about five hundred metres of an embankment along the Dansa river in the Purba Para area of northern Sulkini and submerged several neighbourhoods of the island. Its residents had sought refuge in tents pitched on pucca roads around flooded areas. Initially, the residents said, they used strips of tarpaulin that they had managed to salvage from inundated homes to make the tents. Later, the local panchayat provided them with some sheets of tarpaulin. Around sixty–seventy families were crammed into a long line of tents pitched on one side of the broken section of the embankment. Most of them subsisted on farming and fishing in small freshwater ponds in the village in pre-Amphan times. Salty seawater had damaged their crops and killed all the fish in their ponds. When I met them on 3 June, most were either making or repairing nets and baskets that they could use to catch fish. 

Several villagers said they were still counting their losses at the time. Among them was Manas Mondal, who owned a houseboat which used to be hired by tourists for cruises on rivers and tidal channels. The storm had ripped apart the upper deck of his houseboat. His family was living in its lower deck, which was still intact. Mondal said he had invested Rs 12 lakh on getting it made five years ago, and reckoned it would cost him Rs 5 lakh to repair the boat and get it up and running. Even then, he did not know if tourists would come “because of the fear of corona.” 

The residents were livid with the slow pace of repair work on the broken embankment and feared more water would gush in from the sea through the breach during the subsequent full moon and new moon nights. “Our houses and farms are under knee-deep water. Yet, not a single panchayat member or political leader has come to us or conducted a survey to assess what we are losing,” Bharat Sau, a middle-aged farmer, said. Some residents of the island told me that they did not expect any government relief to reach them, echoing the concerns expressed by people in the Patharpratima and Kakdwip blocks of South 24 Parganas. 

A few residents said that political affiliations determined who received relief. A government school teacher in the Patharpratima block, who did not wish to be named, said that an all-party committee had toured all panchayats in the area on foot after Cyclone Aila, assessing losses and fixing compensation amounts. “This time, only those willing to sign up for the ruling party”—the All India Trinamool Congress—“are receiving relief materials and compensation,” he said. “There is no transparency, no effort whatsoever to conduct a survey.”

I spoke to Samir Kumar Jana, the member of legislative assembly representing the Patharpratima Vidhan Sabha constituency, about these allegations. “There are 281 booths, 15 gram panchayats, 45 panchayat samiti and two zilla parishad seats in my constituency. Gathering accurate information about damage due to a cyclone over such an expansive, densely populated area is a very difficult task,” he said. Jana denied that party affiliations were a consideration while giving relief. “Since we’re used to facing cyclones, we have a system in place to gather data. It is not perfect, but it has helped us arrive at a fair estimate of damages due to Amphan. We are using that to provide relief to everyone, irrespective of their party affiliation. We are also probing allegations of corruption, and in 60 percent cases, we find that they are arising out of situations where we have provided relief to the father but not to the son, or to one brother but not another.”

Jana said the government was also trying to ensure equity in relief disbursal. “We are trying to provide relief first to those whose betel plantations or farms suffered extensive damage after Bulbul, but were not provided any compensation then. After Bulbul, we identified around 36,000 families whose houses were damaged by the cyclone, and the process to provide them with financial assistance under central and state schemes was underway when Amphan struck. We are not selecting such families for the compensation for damaged houses that we are providing now, even if their houses are damaged, as our resources are very limited,” he said.

But the lack of faith in elected representatives echoed through the Sunderbans. In all the affected blocks, local government bodies were struggling to respond to the crisis and reach relief to people in interior areas. Local leaders and elected panchayat members were only visiting sites where repair work, mostly on broken embankments, was underway. I saw trucks carrying asbestos and tarpaulin but this seemed inadequate compared to the scale of destruction. According to multiple accounts, immediate relief following Amphan from government departments was patchy at best. Civil society groups, NGOs and individuals pitched in with urgently needed supplies, including dry ration, tarpaulin sheets, mosquito nets, torchlights, sanitary pads and clothes, despite a severe strain on their resources.

The residents stressed the damage wrought by Amphan was higher, more intense and more long-term than that inflicted by Aila. They said that as it rained heavily for several days before the arrival of Aila, their fields were already inundated with fresh water from the rain. The seawater that flooded their farms during the cyclone did not cause much damage, apart from destroying standing crops. It rained heavily for a few days after Aila passed as well, they said, but there were no rains before or after Amphan to save their crops.

Most residents I met said that their livelihoods were likely to be severely threatened owing to the combined effect of the Amphan and the pandemic. The possibility of finding well-paying work in big cities and industrial clusters seemed virtually absent. During my trip, I overheard a group of people at a tea stall in G-Plot discuss that the migrants who were returning to the island might also not be able to go back to work in big cities due to the pandemic. 

According to a strategy report on Building Resilience for Sustainable Development of the Sundarbans, published by the World Bank in 2014, more than seventy percent families in Sundarbans were engaged in agriculture in the monsoon months, between mid-May and mid-September. Non-agricultural labour and trading, including in milk and dairy products, occupied a higher share during the rest of the year, the report stated. Residents I spoke to during my reporting feared they would not be able to farm or fish in flooded plots and ponds for the next one—three years.

The sluggish pace at which the islands seem to be recovering indicates their apprehensions are well-founded. After my return from the Sundarbans—between 9 June and 18 June—villagers and representatives of relief groups, like Amphan Relief Network and Bengal Relief Collective, told me that large patches of land were still inundated with brackish water. Embankments remained under repair in several places, allowing more seawater to gush into low-lying areas through breaches. Ferry services and movement of vehicles were still irregular due to the pandemic and often halted for hours or days in the wake of unconfirmed reports of coronavirus positive cases in the vicinity. Opportunities for daily-wage work were largely absent, barring the odd order for repair of ponds and roads issued under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Markets and procurement channels were barely functional, and farmers were delaying sowing even seasonal vegetables, fearing they will not be able to sell their produce.

“The micro-economy of Sundarbans has been completely destroyed—first by the lockdown, which brought thousands of migrant workers back to the islands, then Amphan,” Avik Saha from Swaraj India, a political party, who is engaged in carrying out relief work in the Sundarbans, said. “This will create massive pressure on land and other natural resources in the area over the next six months. There will be intense competition, and a poor versus poor battle.” He added, “The impact of this over the long term may be worse than we can imagine.” 

Sardar, too, had said that the local economy has been destroyed. On 17 June, he called me to ask if some relief could be arranged for people in his area. Three days later, when we spoke again, he said, “Most people don’t have any income, so there is no expense on anything,” he said. “Things look extremely bad for the next few months.” 
 
Labani Jangi, a research scholar and artist, and Swatilekha Mondal, a research scholar and teacher, contributed to this piece.