Yaad Ali fears the arrival of the rainy season this year.
The 56-year-old farmer from the northeast Indian state of Assam lives with his wife and son on the island of Sandahkhaiti in the Brahmaputra River.
The island, like 2,000 others on the river, floods with increasing ferocity and unpredictability as human-caused climate change makes rainfall more intense and irregular in the region.
The family moves every flood and returns home every dry season.
Ali said politicians in the region have made promises to provide them with help, including during the current elections, but little has changed for his family. For now, they face the risk of being displaced for much of the year.
“We need some kind of permanent solution,” Ali said. “In recent years, it is only a short time after recovering from flood damage that we have to be prepared to face another flood.”
A permanent piece of land in a safer part of the state may be the only solution to their problems, he said. And although local governments have talked about it, only a few riverside islanders have received land rights in the state.
When The Associated Press met Ali and his family last year, they were moving because of the incessant rain that flooded their home island. Now, during the dry season, Ali and his family grow red chillies, corn and a few other vegetables on their small farm on the island.
‘No one cares about our problems’
Like most other islanders, agriculture is their livelihood: an estimated 240,000 people in the state’s Morigaon district – where some of the river islands, known as Chars, are located – depend on fishing and selling produce. such as rice, jute and vegetables from their small farms.
When it rains, the family stays as long as they can, living in knee-deep water inside their small hut, sometimes for days; cooking, eating and sleeping, even when the water in the river rises. But sometimes water engulfs their home, forcing them to flee with their belongings.
“We left everything and tried to find a higher place or move to the nearest relief camp,” Monuwara Begum, Ali’s wife, said last year. The refugee camps are unsanitary and there is never enough space or food, Ali said, and “sometimes we only get rice and salt for days.”
But when it’s dry, the family gets a temporary break. They return to their homes, take care of their farms and manage to earn a living by selling the products they harvest.
India, and the state of Assam in particular, is seen as one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change due to more intense rainfall and flooding, according to a 2021 report by the Energy, Environment and Water Council, a climate entity based in New Delhi. reflection tank.
Like many others in Chars, Ali and his family cannot afford to move permanently and have reconciled themselves to the fate of commuting back and forth.
“Nobody cares about our problems,” said Ali. “All political parties promise to solve the flood problems, but after the elections, nobody cares about it.”
“We have to manage here somehow,” he said.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
