Lalgola (Murshidabad): There once was a village called Taranagar, not so long ago. It had a school, a market and a mosque, like every other village in Murshidabad district of West Bengal. Today, the village exists only in memory. The river swallowed it whole.

Its end came on Independence Day. As the tricolour fluttered and festive meals simmered, the calm was shattered by a command from the Sheikh Ali mosque's loudspeaker: “The riverbank was giving way. Everyone must flee.” 

Within hours, Taranagar was gone.

“We grabbed a few essentials, left our furniture and belongings in a nearby mango orchard,” recalls a resident, now living at Sheikh Ali School, which doubles as a relief camp. 

“You see those whirlpools in the water far away? Our house stood a hundred metres before that spot,” says Chumki Khatun, pointing towards the vanished home of her ancestors while new slumps tore at Radhakrishnapur-Kalinagar downstream.

“I only want land – safe land – where I can live,” weeps an elderly Bishakha Ghosh, as Chumki Khatun and Jelekha Bibi try to comfort her. 

By land, the people here simply mean a safe place to live.

Now, along Padma river's edge, the roar of the current is the only constant, a low thunder beneath the chirping of crickets. The sound of the banks collapsing punctuates the night, a reminder that the land is being eaten in real time.

In the dim light, Jayanta Shil scrambles over the debris of his home, the river raging a foot away. 

“Many houses here were built with money sent by sons working in Kerala or Dubai. Years of sweat, gone in hours,” says Jayanta Shil, pointing to a crumbling clay oven and a tulsi altar, all that remains of his home. 

The current is already tearing them down.

The scale of loss is staggering. In just the last few months, hundreds from Taranagar alone have been uprooted. Across the wider regions of Malda and Murshidabad, displacement has long been measured in the hundreds of thousands, with some families forced to move as many as 16 times in the past two decades. From houses to irrigation canals to BSF outposts, the river has claimed everything in its path.

This pattern confirms what scientists and officials have long warned. In recent decades, the Padma river’s channel has both widened and shifted, with the most severe erosion often occurring after monsoon waters recede, when waterlogged banks collapse in massive slabs. 

The scale of this loss is vast. According to a NASA report, the river has consumed over 66,000 hectares of land since 1967.

“Taranagar used to be an old and prominent village. In the last 20 years, many well-off families left, but the poor, mainly farmers, stayed, holding on to their land,” said local teacher Abdul Hai Choudhury.

Residents live by the river's merciless rhythm. Each monsoon, the Padma swells, gnawing at the banks. As the water recedes, the saturated earth shears away in colossal slabs, carrying more of their world away.

Last Durga Puja, families from nearby Radhakrishnapur and Lalgola slept on classroom floors. This season, more have joined them. The Sheikh Ali School, founded in 1909, is now a relief camp. 

“The Padma is an international river – the central government does nothing. NTPC’s wrong measures have worsened the situation. Still, the state government has allocated Rs 7.5 crore to repair the riverbank and provide land deeds to the displaced. However, work is delayed because the Lalgola Panchayat Samiti is run by the Left-Congress alliance,” alleged Lalgola’s Trinamool Congress MLA, Md Ali. 

While chief minister Mamata Banerjee has announced new funds and sought more from the Union government, relief provided on the ground remains patchy. Erosion is not officially a “notified disaster,” preventing systematic compensation.

The response is often a cycle of emergency rice and tarps after each collapse, a temporary balm for a permanent wound.

“Since August 15 this year, a vast area of old settlements has gone underwater. If people lose this livelihood, they’ll face disaster. Large agricultural fields have already been submerged — the government must step in,” said opposition-run Panchayat Samiti member Md. Ismail Haque.

The solution, according to residents and engineers, requires a fundamental shift. It demands heavy, expert riverbank fortification executed in the dry season. It requires enforcing bans on sand mining and formalising erosion as a national disaster to unlock sustained resettlement funds. Most of all, it requires acknowledging that for places like Taranagar, managed retreat with full rehabilitation is the only path left.

For now, the road forks into two urgent needs – immediate protection for what remains and compensation for those who have lost everything. Villagers insist that token funds and bamboo stakes are a cruel joke.

“If such erosion happened along the Ganga near cities like Kolkata or Howrah, would the government stay silent? Politicians come here only during elections. Who listens to our cries,” asks an aged Chanda Ghosh. 

Her house is now rubble. 

Back at the school-turned-camp, Sukhia Bibi counts out seven kilos of rice for a family with no kitchen. “We have no income. How long can we sleep in a classroom,” she asks.

Translated from Bangla by Aparna Bhattacharya.

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