Man Is An Island

Jainul's life is tied to nature's cycle of seasons. Barring an odd visit by the circle officer or a stray sojourn by a team of medical staff for a Pulse Polio campaign, the residents are left to themselves.

For four months, May to September, the entire island is inundated, forcing its inhabitants to take shelter in make-shift camps put up by the administration on the mainland. Says Zoinuddin, a grizzled 70-year-old: "We are at the mercy of the river. Sometimes it spares us the agony of shifting out, sometimes it does not." He should know. He has been in Balagaon for as long as he can remember. "Every year when the floods come, we shift to higher places on the char, when that gets waterlogged we climb atop the trees and when that does not help, we send our family members to some sarkari camp," he says in a matter-of-fact tone.

The char is the ultimate back-of-the-beyond in Assam's remote areas. The only means of commuting is the old boat run on an equally antiquated engine. Once a day it leaves the char for the mainland and makes the return journey, which takes an hour-and-a-half, before darkness envelopes the island. Over the last three years, the department of telecommunication has deigned to put up a telephone connection on the island but it is at best a decorative piece, providing entertainment to the kids who gather around the telephone room the moment it rings. In fact, the telephone is the only symbol of modernity in Balagaon.

Winter may be the best season to visit these areas but you cannot get a feel of what it is like to live in a char till the monsoons. As Kishor Thakuna, the circle officer at Chhaygaon under which Balagaon falls remarks: "In winter, the waters have receded, the river is flowing gently and the dust is also settled. It looks all serene now but to get the real feel of what a char is, you must visit us in the monsoons." He has a point.

Life is an endless misery during those months on Balagaon. There is not an inch of dry land. Water level rises every hour as the swirling Brahmaputra threatens to swallow the small island. Ironically, that is also the time when the government comes closest to the people (all of them immigrant Muslims who have travelled to Assam over the years) of Balagaon. The marooned people have to be rescued and put up in make-shift camps on the mainland; they have to be provided with ration and medicines. During the rest of the year, the 1,500-odd residents of this island fend for themselves.

And they have learnt to cope. Says Hafiz Parvez, who grows vegetables and sells them once a week in the mainland market to sustain his family of nine. "We have worked out a system of survival. Since we know that for at least five to six months we will not have any chance of earning even a penny, we try to make up during this dry season." The earnings are of course just about enough to keep the family from starving.As Ziauddin, another small farmer who grows wheat and pulses, says: "If I earn about 1,000 rupees a month by selling off my produce, it keeps my family afloat." The Rs 1,000 a month income, in fact, keeps him officially below the poverty line.

Most residents suffer Ziauddin's plight. Although very few of them are landless, there is no guarantee that the piece of land that a resident owns will not be swallowed up by the Brahmaputra in the near future. And once that happens (a frequent occurrence), there is no other means of livelihood but to work as a farm hand which further reduces the income possibilities. For there are no other jobs to be had at Balagaon.

But jobs are not the only missing lifeline here. There's a lack of medical facilities and other amenities normally taken for granted like potable water. The nearest dispensary is an hour's boat ride away. That is, provided the patient can be brought to the boat station in time. A mobile dispensary does make an occasional call  at Balagaon but that is obviously not enough. There are a couple of government-sponsored deep tube wells but they are insufficient.

The char has no power because the question of laying electrical lines across the vast sheet of water that is the Brahmaputra does not arise. And there is no government presence save for the "dewani". Again, unlike other normal villages in Assam, there is no government-appointed village headman or "gaon burrah" as he is called elsewhere. Instead, all char areas are 'administered' by the dewanis. In a purely informal arrangement, the richest man on a char who is also a little more educated than others is the dewani.

A dewani is the judge, administrator and policeman all rolled into one—his word is final. In fact, most politicians use this man as their local agent. And so it is with Hanif Ali Dewani on the Balagaon char. A man with two wives and a dozen children—"I have to feed 26 mouths"—Hanif Ali is a typical char headman. He is obsequious to the visitors and imperious with his subjects. The village phone is installed in his back yard. The lower primary school is right in front of his house and he owns the largest plot of land.

The village school, a ramshackle hut, also serves as the polling booth come elections. Incidentally, Balagaon falls under the Guwahati Lok Sabha constituency. The char has about 600 voters. The polling officials have to carry the material a day in advance, stay put the night at the dewani's house, complete the process and head back to the mainland before sundown. Political awareness is reasonably good but many of the voters are baffled as to how voting time has come so quickly. "Will we get paid equally well this time too?" asks Fazlul Haque, a first-time voter eagerly. Clearly, he has seen his elders enjoying the fruits of voting in the immediate aftermath of the election. But those who know the way political campaigning is carried out in the char areas say the real power rests with the dewani. "It is his word that swings the votes," says a local official. Democracy may be all about people's rights and powers. Here in the char areas, it is about a single man's decision which, in any case is based more on who lines his pocket more.