West Bengal’s Submerged Villages

By Jessica Goel

Millions of people in India’s West Bengal state have been facing the brunt of meandering rivers for years. Over the last decade, entire villages living on ?Charlands? ? river islands that emerge as a result of a river changing its path’s have had to move to nearby patches of land for up to 16 times. Despite the continual displacement en masse, neither the central government nor the state government of West Bengal has a comprehensive policy to compensate or rehabilitate them, complains Dr. Abul Kalam Mohammad, a professor of geography at Aliah University in Kolkata.