Into the tyranny of apathy- The story of a devastating flood in an obscure land 

“You cannot fold a Flood —

And put it in a Drawer

Because the Winds would find it out

And tell your Cedar Floor ” – Emily Dickinson, American Poet.

As another sublime parody of electoral democracy unfolds in the imperial theatre of Radisson Blu , Guwahati, a tragedy of unspeakable proportions has befallen the second largest city of Assam. Silchar has been marooned from the rest of the country effectively without potable water, food, electricity, and road and rail connectivity. A mother is wailing for some food for her child, ” Give me some Lactogen, give me some milk, my child hasn’t eaten anything for the last three days “. A son is begging for his father’s corpse to be cremated, ” My father’s body has started to rot. Please help me. It has been more than 48 hours”.

“My mother is a dialysis patient. She is dying right in front of my own eyes. Evacuate us, I beg of you all”, writes another helpless daughter on her Facebook wall. A husband is wading through the neck-high water to look for anyone who can help him in taking his expecting wife to a hospital.” Please contact my father. He lives alone and he isn’t picking up my calls. He is a hypertension patient “, writes a son frantically trying to ensure that his father is still alive. If these horrid scenes aren’t telling enough, dead bodies have started to float in various parts of the city. In an eerie silence, punctuated only by the wailing of people in acute pain, I am writing the story of the deluge of Silchar. It is a harrowing story of one of the worst urban floods in the recent history of this country. All the more importantly, it is a story of how nature’s wrath, political apathy, administrative indifference and criminal negligence have cumulatively choreographed Barak river’s ‘dance of death ‘ on the bosom of Silchar. It’s a portrayal of a forgotten Netherland gasping for breath in medieval squalor.

Silchar is situated on the bank of river Barak. Barak traces its roots to the Liyai Kullen Village in Manipur. Near its source, the river receives streams such as Vehrei Gumti, Howrah, Kagni, Senai Buri, Hari Mangal, Kakrai, Kurulia, Balujhuri, Shonaichhari and Durduria. From Manipur, the river flows into Nagaland, Mizoram and then enters Assam. In the past, Barak has wreaked havoc on the Silchar city in the past as well – most significantly in the years 1989,2004 and 2007. There have been many more floods of relatively lesser magnitude and scale throughout the history of Silchar. However, this year’s deluge is unprecedented for several reasons. Firstly, Silchar has never experienced two floods within thirty days. Secondly, Barak has never engulfed every inch of the city in the past. Thirdly, never before have people suffered so immensely. Lastly, no Chief Minister has ever referred to any flood as “Man-made “.

It will be intriguing to delve into the reasons for the unprecedented nature of this flood. On 17th May 2022, owing to incessant rains, Barak started flowing over its danger level. Within a couple of days, many low-lying parts of the city were inundated. Lakhs of people had been affected all across the District of Cachar. While Barak was swelling up, many embankments and dikes built around the city had been damaged. Bethukandi embankment, one of the most important shields guarding Silchar against the fury of the Barak river, had been partially compromised as well. Responding to the anxiety of the citizens around the Bethukandi embankment, the District Administration assured them that the dyke had not collapsed and there was no need for panic. It would be all the more vexing to note that panic around the Bethukandi embankment started building up in 2019 as well. The District Administration, in its usual nonchalance, assuaged the anxiety of the people by asking people not to panic unnecessarily.

For the last three years, people living around the Bethukandi embankment have been raising alarm bells about an impending doom. Arijit Aditya, Editor In Chief of Bartalipi Daily, writes, ” When I visited Bethukandi on 21st May 2022, local people told me unambiguously that they were sick and tired of their miserable condition. Once the river water recedes, they would cut a pathway in the Bethukandi embankment to save themselves from regular inundation”. Decades of administrative indifference, halting of the construction of a key sluice gate project and a sense of anger against the city folks for their lack of sympathy have been brewing a sense of deep-seated anger in the inhabitants of the Bethukandi area. The last time around, when the Barak river gradually started receding, disturbing whispers around the Bethukandi embankment were still very much afloat. Since the water had ebbed and the river fell below the danger level, the District Administration went about their usual schedule.” I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke”, so goes the pithy saying of Soren Kierkegaard. The timeline of events, from here on, speaks of the perfect recipe for a disaster. On 15th June, the Deputy Commissioner of Cachar, Kirthi Jalli, who is usually perceived as an able administrator, received the second prize for ” Food control ” at the Tezpur Deputy Commissioners’ Conference from the Chief Minister of Assam. As the IMD sounded a red alert for the Cachar District on the very next day, the District Administration woke up from their stupor and realised that the Bethukandi embankment had been completely jeopardized. On 17th June, the District Administration swung to action and started the restoration work. Too little, too late – it had already started to rain incessantly and the Barak was swelling up once again. On 18th June, Barak breached the danger level at the Annapurna Ghat. On 19th June, the MLA of Silchar Constituency, Dipayan Chakroborty, was seen campaigning with Dr Himanta Biswa Sharma in Tripura. Dr Rajdeep Roy, Member of Parliament from Silchar, was reportedly attending a conference at Gujrat. On the same day, the District Administration finally admitted what the people of Silchar feared the most. An advisory was released by the District Administration, which read, ” As per the reports received, the dyke at Bethukandi had been damaged by some miscreants and despite efforts to restore that portion, river water is now entering “. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. Barak, in its most gargantuan avatar, was raging into the city, the District administration was listless, the political leadership had abdicated its duty and the helpless people started bracing for the inevitable. With the Bethukandi embankment gone, Barak was flowing into Silchar completely unhindered. Within 24 hours, the entire city of Silchar was submerged. With water levels touching the first floors of many buildings, the electricity connections got snapped immediately. Water rushed into the generators running the mobile towers, and consequently, mobile connectivity got severed too. With no electricity to fuel the pumps, no source of fresh water was left for any household. Thus, hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded in a cesspool of hunger, starvation, agony and death. The entire city of Silchar was echoing with the unspeakable misery and pain. Since the warning from the District Administration was published on 19th June, and that too, without any hint of the intensity of the catastrophe which was about to hit, most of the people weren’t prepared at all. Within 24 hours, the scarcity of food, water and essential medicines became conspicuous. If the living were desperately struggling for survival, the dead weren’t relieved of brutal indignity too. Since the crematorium was completely flooded, it was impossible to perform the last rites. Reports of people imploring and begging for the last rites of their loved ones were abounding. On 21st June, a body was found floating in the Ithkhola area of the city. The body was completely putrefied.

As this haunting ordeal continued, dozens of Shivsena MLAs landed at the Guwahati airport. Swanky Volvo buses were lined up at the Guwahati Airport, water-tight security awaited the grand arrival at the Radisson Blu Hotel, hundreds of cameras were flashing, frenzied journos were hyperventilating over the sheer richness of the moment, and top State Ministers were orchestrating the event. And in all of this grotesque vulgarity, not more than 400 kilometres away from Guwahati, a city was gasping for survival.

Smouldering anger was evident in every corner of a drowning city. The District Administration’s flood control and relief machinery had broken down completely. The helpline numbers were non-functional, the number of boats deployed for search and rescue was paltry in number and there was no system of supplying the essentials for bare subsistence. When the Chief Minister was intimated about the magnitude of the disaster, the Ministry of Home Affairs dispatched NDRF teams from Bhubaneswar to facilitate the search, rescue and evacuation process. However, as a senior journalist of Silchar, Pranabananda Das, wrote, “The NDRF teams reached Silchar at night and they had no idea where they need to go. No official from the District Administration was present to brief the NDRF teams”. Under the crumbling pressure of the crisis, the district administrative machinery was overwhelmed. As the seething anger of the people of Silchar was heating up with each passing hour, the Chief Minister decided to visit the city on 23rd June. After taking aerial sorties over the flood-affected areas, the Chief Minister chaired several key meetings and granted a slew of relief measures- more NDRF teams will be sent, 1 lakh litres of water will be air-dropped every morning, and the Air force will be deployed for air dropping of essentials, ward wise relief and rescue plans will be etched out, a team of civil servants will be sent from Guwahati to aid the District Administration, so on and so forth. However, most strikingly, the Chief Minister dubbed the flood a “man-made disaster”.Answering the questions from the press, the Chief Minister said, “Not only will we take action but we will ensure exemplary punishment to the ones who are responsible for breaking the Bethukandi embankment”.

It has been more than 24 hours since the Honourable Chief Minister has left Silchar and the people of Silchar are still languishing in the worst of circumstances possible. The outcry of people, begging for water, food and medicines, lingers on. Some are complaining that the air dropping of essentials is a token gesture. Firstly, half of the food and water is getting destroyed upon impact on the ground and secondly, the helicopters are dropping relief on one or two buildings of any sizeable neighbourhood. The entire landscape of Silchar has been reduced to an ugly hellhole of SOS messages splattered on the rooftops, balconies and windows. The rescue teams are still vastly understaffed. The helpline numbers are still mostly unresponsive. However, in all this trenchant agony, apathy and misery, several NGOs and spirited citizens of Silchar are putting up an unbelievable fight. With bare minimum wherewithal, people are trying to cremate the dead, rescue the ailing, and supply water and food to as many people as they can. In one such instance, volunteers of an NGO braved the chest-high water to deliver life-saving medicines to an elderly couple. “My husband is paralyzed and I am almost bedridden too. If I could go out to buy medicines, I wouldn’t have bothered you, my child” – said the old lady to one of the volunteers. Bijendra Singh, a former ward commissioner, has managed to build a team of good samaritans and they are extending help in all manner possible. It is the unflinching effort and heroism of the likes of these NGOs and Bijendra Singhs which is holding Silchar from becoming a giant crematorium. The worst of times, indeed, bring out the best in men.

As the gaping gloom of the night envelopes the floating nightmare of Silchar, one is reminded of a couplet from Agha Sahid Ali’s poem, “Of Light”,

“From History tears learn a slanted understanding of the human face torn by blood’s bulletin of light.”

Once all of this is over, will we remember anything at all?