How locals are trying to save the dying Deepor Beel

Many Assamese writers assert that the word deep is an indigenous term for elephants, while some say the word deepor comes from the Sanskrit word dipa, which means elephants. And beel means lake in Assamese. Deepor Beel (lake of elephants) is sandwiched in the ever-expanding city of Guwahati.

It is one of the critical wetlands of the Brahmaputra Valley in lower Assam and the state’s lone Ramsar site (declared in 2002), besides being a significant area for resident and migratory birds. It has also been a patch for the elephant movement for ages and the 4.14 square kilometre area of the beel has been declared a wildlife sanctuary.

Despite being a wetland protected by law, it is subjected to several anthropogenic threats, including that from a railway track that runs parallel to the wetland and a waste yard in its periphery.

There has always been a cloud of scepticism as to who spells the threat to Deepor Beel. The answer, most of the time, is given with just one finger pointed towards the rich urbanites and powerful authorities; the rest four fingers are mercilessly pointed towards the marginalised communities dwelling in the margins of the beel. Such sheer audacity to a biased opinion arises from a lack of understanding of the ecosystem.

The word beel owes its origin to Bengali and Assamese languages, which means a pond or lake-like static water body in a floodplain. There are several cultural connotations of a beel for the Assamese people. A beel has never really remained separated from humans since time immemorial.

One of the authors, Sampurna Adhyapak, during a participatory observation with a fisherman in Deepor Beel.

Names of wetlands such as Hnahila Beel in Nagaon are derived from the Assamese word hnah (meaning duck). People here believe that Hnahila Beel got its name due to the abundance of ducks.

Maguri beel in Tinsukia got its name from the Assamese word magur, which means walking catfish. Similarly, Arimora Beel near Kaziranga has the Assamese word ari, a variety of catfish and mora, meaning trapping.

At the same time, Sone Beel in Karimganj is also known for its fishing activities. Assamese folktales, songs and customs have always portrayed the fishing culture of its people, mostly during the feasting festival of Magh Bihu.

Almost 1,200 families inhabit the areas surrounding Deepor Beel, most belonging to different ethnic tribes, including the Karbi and the Rabha. Their economic and sociocultural lives are deeply incorporated with the elements of nature. The Rabha inhabitants of Satargaon, situated quite close to Deepor Beel, celebrate johong puja, based on cherishing the environment’s beauty and importance, including the wetland.

Community fishing around such festivities is an important attribute of the social, economic and cultural fabric of the people living around Deepor Beel. Apart from fishing, the locals largely depend on the beel for edible herbs and other comestibles, herbal medicines, fodder, grazing, and wood for fuel.

The surrounding forests provide most of the materials used for constructing their houses, such as bamboo and reeds for thatch roofs. These practices of the communities, apparently, are not objectionably new, but perhaps, the spectre of haphazard urbanisation in Guwahati and the looming crises of urban waste are.

The tranquillity of this sacred domain has been assailed in recent years. With audacious disregard for the delicate balance between progress and preservation, the government has erected sprawling networks of roads and factories encircling the ethereal expanse of water, unceremoniously polluting the water.

This reckless incursion has wrought havoc upon the once teeming fish populations, with their numbers dwindling to a disheartening nadir. At the same time, the people who carved their existence around the beel now find themselves ensnared in a tumultuous struggle for survival.

“Almost 825 people reside in Keotpara, of which many are dependent on fishing on a daily basis from generations. But the dumping site in Boragaon has polluted the water of the beel. This does not allow the fish to grow,” said the headman of Keotpara village, another village adjacent to the beel. 

Located towards the city’s southwest, Boragaon landfill lies very close to Deepor Beel. Guwahati generates 550 tonnes per day of solid wastes and 85-90 per cent of this is carted off to Boragaon daily until its recent shift to Betkuchi in 2021. Betkuchi is just 2.5 km from Boragaon and evidently, such a shift does not make much difference. 

“The government is trying to make it seem like the health of the beel is affected because of the people’s dependency on the beel for their needs. But that is not the case. We, villagers, have taken a lot of initiatives for sustainably coexisting with the wetland and its resources. It is the swarming construction of apartments and mostly the garbage dump that affects the wetland the most,” said Mainu Das of Simang.

Simang, meaning dreams in their local language, is a collective initiative by six women from Keotpara. They have successfully transformed the invasive weed, water hyacinths into beautiful artefacts and yoga mats. Water hyacinths can rapidly multiply within a week, making it a persistent problem for the ecosystem.

Artefacts made of water hyacinth.

Along with bettering the health of the beel, this initiative has also provided employment to 38 women from the community. Even during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Simang was able to provide a livelihood to its employees who process raw materials from the Deepor Beel and weave the products in their own handloom.

Another such initiative is the ‘Kumbhi Kagaz’, an innovative endeavour that focuses on ecologically restoring Deepor Beel while simultaneously creating alternative livelihoods for the locals of Keotpara. The initiative converts water hyacinths into 100 per cent biodegradable, chemical-free handmade papers. 

“Kumbhi Kagaz has been successful in removing 50 tonnes of the invasive water hyacinths in the last two years. This has significantly improved the growth of makhana (prickly water lily) in the wetland, which has high commercial value,” said Rupankar Bhattacharya of Kumbhi Kagaz. 

Workers examining paper made of water hyacinth.

These initiatives are testimony of locals addressing the wetland’s deteriorating health and also sustainable management of property of the commons. The beel, a veritable lifeline intertwined with the local ecosystem, represents a sublime tapestry of interdependence between people and nature.

However, with fishing banned in the protected areas of Deepor Beel, the locals, whose lives were as simple as encircling around fishing and selling them in Godhuli Bojar (the nearest local market), are now devastated. 

Fishing is the very lifeblood of these people. They yearn for conservation ethos that would not bar them from accessing the resources they had long relied upon; rather recognise their harmonising traditional knowledge. Contemporary scientific insights into such knowledge can ease the burden of overreliance on a single resource. 

Ironically, it is always the marginalised communities that are unjustly castigated for the decline of an ecosystem, who actually are supposed to be protected, for they are the closest spectators of nature and its wilderness.

Conservation of any ecosystem is a distant dream if the proximate and underlying factors affecting the ecosystem’s health are not properly researched. And is not the whole idea of an ecosystem, without encompassing its inhabitants, which also includes the local communities, very ominous? 

Anushka Saikia is a wildlife biologist at Elephant Research and Conservation Division, Aaranyak, Guwahati. Sampurna Adhyapak is a research intern, Collaborative project of ASTEC and Cotton University, Guwahati.

Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

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