Rohmoria's Challenge: Natural Disasters, Popular Protests and State Apathy

Rohmoria, in the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra river in Assam, is severely affected by river-borne erosion. Efforts to get government help in combating this erosion passed through different stages of peaceful agitation and ultimately took a political character. People’s resistance used oil blockade as an effective means of getting government attention. Unfortunately, the state’s response has mostly been ad hoc and geared towards temporary measures to lift the oil blockade. This article has two objectives: to portray the nature of the problem of erosion in Rohmoria and to show the history of the peoples’ movement and the state’s response. B efore landing at the Dibrugarh airport, if you look below, a few big pythons seem to guard majestically a huge tract of lush greenery. The pythons are the interwoven channels of the Brahmaputra river and the widespread green stretches having exceptionally high degree of geometric consistency maintaining almost uniform hues are, of course, the tea gardens. A number of famous tea gardens of Assam, still bearing the brand of old colonial heritage, were developed by the side of the Brahmaputra due to the cheaper navigability and the typical growth promoting climate – tropical and temperate – necessary for various plants belonging to the tea family. The commonly available tea species is Camellia sinensis. Kudos to blending, if Darjeeling tea is famous for its fl avour, the Assam tea remained equally famous for its strength and colour for the last one hundred and more years. Along with green tea bushes at the top are to be found some of the oldest oil pools in the depth of the soil, manifested on the surface by the tall oil rigs. Sulphur rich high quality coal reserves are there in the shallow subsurface which is very effective for converting into oil by h ydrogenation. Unfortunately, it is, at present, wasted due to lopsided policies by making coke out of it. Estimated hydroelectricity potential around the Brahmaputra valley is more than 60,000 megawatts (MW), whereas, at the current level of industrialisation, the peak hour need for all the seven states of north-east India is less than 2,500 MW. Brahmaputra River Dynamics