MORIGAON, India. Yaad Ali fears the arrival of the rainy season this year.
The 56-year-old farmer from the northeastern Indian state of Assam lives with his wife and son on Sandahkhaiti Island on India’s Brahmaputra River. The island, like two thousand others in the river, is flooding with increasing ferocity and unpredictability as human-caused climate change makes rainfall more intense and erratic in the region.
The family moves with every flood and returns home every dry season. Ali said politicians in the region have made promises to provide help, including during the current elections, but little has changed for her family. For now, they face being displaced for much of the year.
“We need some kind of permanent solution,” Ali said. “In recent years, it is only shortly after recovering from flood damage that we have to be prepared to face another flood.”
A permanent piece of land in a safer region of the state may be the only solution to their problems, he said. And although local governments have talked about it, only a few river islanders have been offered land rights in the state.
When The Associated Press met with Ali and his family last year, they were moving because of the incessant rains that had flooded their home island. Now, during the dry season, Ali and her family grow red chili peppers, corn and some other vegetables on their small farm on the island.
Like most other islanders, farming 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 cabin, sometimes for days. Cook, eat and sleep, even when the river water rises. But sometimes the water engulfs their house, forcing them to flee with their belongings.
“We dropped everything and tried to find higher ground or move to the nearest relief camp,” Monuwara Begum, Ali’s wife, said last year. The relief camps are unhygienic and there is never enough space or food, Ali said, and “sometimes they only give us rice and salt for days.”
But when there is a drought, the family has a temporary respite. They return to their homes, take care of their farms, and are able to make a living by selling the produce 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 Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a climate body. based in New Delhi. group of experts.
Like many Chars families, Ali and her family cannot afford to move permanently and have come to terms with their fate of moving from one side of their home to the other.
“No one cares about our problems,” Ali said. “All political parties promise to solve the flood problems, but after the elections no one cares.”
“We have to get by here somehow,” he said.
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