Reflections from the Sundarbans as Cyclone Amphan Turns One

A year ago, Cyclone Amphan made land fall in the state of West Bengal and wrought wanton havoc and destruction in the state.

As the cyclone turns one, we wanted to go back and understand the aftermath of the storm that left people suffering.

While COVID-19 made it an impossibility to travel to the region, one of the authors, who had prior experience of working in the region, made extensive use of the social contacts built over the years to write this article. 

The first person we had a phone conversation with was a farmer from Kultali block. He recounted that a decade earlier in 2009, cyclone Aila had come, which was much deadlier and disastrous than Amphan.

He tells us that his house was damaged by Amphan, for which he received a compensation of Rs 5,000 from the government and claims that many didn’t even receive that amount.

Another farmer we talked to, was quite agitated when we called him to know about his side of story. There was palpable anger and dejection in his voice over his ruined house which he couldn’t rebuild even after a year. Nonetheless, after much hesitation, he narrated the losses he incurred and the water crises that emerged as none of the tube-wells are able to draw water from the ground.

Like the first farmer, he also received a compensation amount of Rs 5000 but protests that the compensation amount originally announced was Rs 20,000 for each beneficiary. He said that one needed to be “politically aligned” to get development assistance and those who are not, have to fend for themselves. The conversation comes to an end but not before he said, “The poor have no one.”

Grass-root organisations working in Kultali block gave the authors an idea of how functioning of prior warning systems leave much to be desired and how COVID-19 disrupted relief work. Pabitra Mondal, president of Sundarban Jana Sramajibi Mancha (SJSM) said that during the time of Amphan, people were warned earlier and were shifted to the newly built cyclone shelters or to nearby schools.

Also read: Ground Report | ‘People of Sunderbans Didn’t Die in Cyclone Yaas, They Might Die of Poverty’

However, these shelters were overcrowded with the return of migrant workers. His organisation distributed food, tarpaulin and first aid kits, among other things, among those at the shelters. Government help reached them but not at the right time, said Mondal. “By the time help arrives, the starving lose their appetite,” he said.

Another grass-root representative is Prabir Mishra, who is associated with the Missing Link Trust (MLT), an organisation that works against the trafficking of children and women. He has assessed the social and economic impacts of both COVID-19 and Amphan.

“The overall COVID-19 situation was normal, few patients were taken to Baruipur and Canning hospitals,” Mishra added, nothing that testing was admittedly low in the area.

The lockdown impacted the delivery of welfare schemes and many houses under Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awaas Yojana (PMGAY) have remained half-built. According to 2011 Census, government housing schemes like PMGAY are crucial as 22% of houses in the Indian Sundarbans are in a dilapidated condition. Given the scenario and the environmental vulnerability of the area, the schemes should be penetrated to all the sections of the society.

Mishra concurs with the second farmer that political patronage works to a great extent, leaving many deserving families out when it comes to compensation.

Also read: WB: Amphan Compensation Woes Echo Across Rural Howrah as RSS Makes Its Presence Felt

Women who were affected most used to work as house maids and ‘ayas’ in Kolkata and its suburbs but the second wave of COVID-19 restricted their movement, adversely hitting their household income. Mishra said this has in turn increased domestic violence. 

“In last one year alone, Kultali block has seen a total of 350 cases of domestic violence. If that’s not disturbing enough, then there have been 186 attempts to die by suicide and 72 deaths, mostly among boys aged between 18 and 25. In nearby Gosaba block, 10 girls are reported to be missing due to trafficking,” Mishra said.

Gosaba block, where Sundarban National Park is situated, is no different from Kultali block. The second wave of COVID-19 has become a major roadblock in the path to economic recovery in the block as well. Rabin Mondal of Tagore Society for Rural Development (TSRD) took us through to the ground situation in Gosaba block.

Due to Amphan, many houses mostly made of mud, cane and bamboos collapsed but buildings made of concrete survived the storm. Although farmers in Gosaba could cultivate their land, the yield has not been as it used to be. Rabin Mondal said that the maximum yield that the farmers could get is 60% of the usual output.

Another member from SJSM informed that paddy which used to be sold at Rs 900 per sack is now sold at Rs 700. The prolonged dry period after Amphan has made it a problem accessing the ground water in the area. One of the two farmers stated that Indian Sundarbans have not received enough rainfall after the Amphan cyclone at all. Besides that, many people who cultivate fishes in ponds are also affected by Amphan. 

Local organisations like TSRD and SJSM in conjunction with Child in Need Institute (CINI), Baikanthapur Tarun Sangha and others are engaging with locals to provide alternative means to generate income in the form of mask-making, encouraging farmers to cultivate crops that need less water and imparting training on vermi-composting, among others.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, the number of women working on mask making came down from 20-30 to four at Missing Link’s financial empowering programme. Similarly, people couldn’t get adequate economic benefit from the other sectors as well.

For instance, fishing at present has stopped as it is time for hatching and fishermen will not be allowed to access the water for the next three months. But the irony here is, fishermen with small boats are not allowed while trawlers are allowed.

We enquired if the farmers here received PM Kisan Samman Nidhi installment amount of Rs 2,000. However, Pabitra Mondal of SJSM informed that many farmers here are ineligible to receive the amount as they don’t own lands. Majority of the cultivators work on other’s land as share croppers and agricultural labourers and they are the ones who are in need of the money. The situation is far worse for people belonging to the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities as very few among them own land.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which provides rural Indians an opportunity to work for guaranteed income was affected last year due to the lockdown. Data from the MGNREGA website shows that there has been significant reduction in total budget allocation, number of person-days generated and average number of days of employment provided to households. 

The data shows that there are 517 gram panchayats in West Bengal where no expenditure has taken place for the latest financial year while there was not a single gram panchayat with no expenditure in the previous financial year.

West Bengal has been affected by several meteorological and hydrological disasters in the last few decades. Additionally, cyclones are regularly formed in the Bay of Bengal and recently, we observed an increased frequency of cyclones in the western coast of the country due to increased warming of Arabian sea.

The people in the Indian Sundarbans were still reeling from the Aila (which affected more than 50 million people), when Amphan hit the Gangetic delta last year. It will take years if not a decade, to overcome the trauma and loss effected doubly by Amphan and the pandemic. By the time we completed this article, cyclone Yaas made its way through the same region, leaving behind a trail of devastation that is yet to be fully mapped.

Sneha Biswas is a PhD scholar in Development Studies at Center for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources (CEENR), Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru.

Michael Islary is a PhD Scholar in Development Studies at the Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources, ISEC, Bengaluru and also, he is working as a Junior Consultant at the National Institute of Disaster Management, New Delhi.