The politics of eviction and citizenship in the Brahmaputra valley, Assam, India

Mountains of inequality: encountering the politics of climate adaptation across the Himalaya

“…Chars and chaporis are riverine sandbars, islands, and low-lying riverbanks formed by the process of sediment deposition and erosion of the Brahmaputra River (Kumar and Das 2019, Agarwala 2020. They are unstable temporary land masses, highly vulnerable to floods, and constantly reshaped by the push and pull of the river (Boruah et al 2021). Though chars can be under water for months out of the year, or even disappear overnight at the whims of the Brahmaputra, they also provide valuable fertile land for cultivating crops, such as mustard, poppy, jute, sugar cane, as well as vegetables and leafy greens (Saikia 2019, Boruah et al 2021.…”

“…They are unstable temporary land masses, highly vulnerable to floods, and constantly reshaped by the push and pull of the river (Boruah et al 2021). Though chars can be under water for months out of the year, or even disappear overnight at the whims of the Brahmaputra, they also provide valuable fertile land for cultivating crops, such as mustard, poppy, jute, sugar cane, as well as vegetables and leafy greens (Saikia 2019, Boruah et al 2021. Historically, these "undefined and undulating lands" were settled only temporarily during the dry winter months, and char dwellers practiced shifting cultivation in 2-to 3-year cycles before having to evacuate (Saikia 2020).…”

“…Today, 5-10% of the Assamese population lives on chars and chaporis (Kumar and Das 2019, Boruah et al 2021, and these settlements are marked by low human and economic development indices (Agarwala 2020). Though other communities such as Misings, Deoris, Kocharis, and Nepali grazers also occupy these islands, since most char dwellers are Muslims of Bengali origins, for much of the Assamese public, chars have become synonymous with "illegal migration" and "dubious nationality" (Agarwala 2020).…”

“…Though other communities such as Misings, Deoris, Kocharis, and Nepali grazers also occupy these islands, since most char dwellers are Muslims of Bengali origins, for much of the Assamese public, chars have become synonymous with "illegal migration" and "dubious nationality" (Agarwala 2020). Changes in the Assamese agrarian political economy, which have made land more valuable and scarcer, in conjunction with statewide efforts to update the NRC and create a list of Indian Assamese "sifted from the illegal immigrants," have put every char dweller at risk of being evicted or reported to the authorities (Boruah et al 2021). This creates situations, such as the one https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol28/iss4/art6/ described by Gupta (2019), where char dwellers must worry not only about surviving the next flood, but also about safeguarding important legacy documents from the floodwaters.…”

“…Much like the aspirations of mainstream CCA, elite aspirations for the region are also intimately tied to the production of a territory at any scale, which is simultaneously amenable for extraction and can also serve as a conduit for hegemonic adaptation strategies. But such machinations undermine the subjective fluidity of regional inhabitants (Toffin and Pfaff-Czarnecka 2014, Murton 2019, Boruah et al 2021. In many ways, the multi-scalar institutions often forced upon them, either by a state mandate or by a form of participatory governance, with preordained degrees of freedom, fail to represent this fluidity (Zou and Kumar 2011, Whitmore 2018, Lord et al 2020.…”