Communities along Sukapaika river come together to reverse a manmade disaster

With health and livelihoods at stake, the communities along Sukapaika have joined hands to revive the river before the spreading encroachments make its decline irreversible. Bhubaneswar: The disappearing river has also left a mark on the health and wellbeing of the people living around it.  [Read part one of the story here]“We are sick of water weeds (hyacinths) that cover the stagnant water on the riverbed like a thick mat. These weeds not only turned the water into a breeding ground of mosquitoes and flies but also a habitation of poisonous snakes,” said Sd Sajid Ali (48 ) of Praharajpur. Roshan Rath, reckoned anecdotally, that he hears of at least 10 cases of snakebite every year.“The Cuttack Drainage Division gets a huge sum to clear the weeds but they don’t put much effort into it. Rather they siphon off a huge amount of money. Groups of villagers have been clearing some patches of the river from time to time, but the weeds regrow soon,” said Ratikanta Patnaik (48), a villager of Praharajpur.Raising concerns over the growth of hyacinths on the river bed, Prasad K Dash, a scientist of Odisha Biodiversity Board, said these invasive species are an indicator of bad ecological health. Hyacinths create a conducive environment for the growth of disease pathogens, insects and mosquitoes by obstructing sunlight that is vital for aquatic life. He maintained that it is difficult to get rid of the weeds and freshwater flow may prove beneficial.Dr Ashok K Satpathy, a paediatrics specialist at a rural training centre of the Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) at Kalarabanka, which lies on the bank of Sukapaika, said, “The number of patients affected by various skin and vector-borne diseases such as scabies, malaria and dengue has gone up since the river died.” He attributed the reason to the unhygienic condition created by the hyacinths.River Sukapaika, covered in hyacinths, has become a breeding ground for mosquitoes, flies and poisonous snakes (Picture credit - Roshan Rath)Meanwhile, encroachments spreadAs these multi-faceted ripple effects were unfolding, encroachment was growing along the river. “Unscrupulous people have erected brick kilns, developed ponds and other structures including houses on the riverbed,” said Sajid Ali (48) of Praharajpur. “Many people have even acquired 99-year lease pattas through illegal means.” The patta land on the river would amount to more than 500 acres along the entire length of the river, he added. Activists and journalists who have tried to figure out the nature and extent of these encroachments have been met with silence.RTI activist Prashant Pradhan, a native of riparian Kamarpada village in Dharina panchayat, had applied to the Kishan Nagar tahsildar under the Right to Information Act in 2003 and then again in 2010 about the legal standing of these leases. However, he is yet to get any response. Sushant Jena, a correspondent of a vernacular daily, had also sought to know the encroachment status on the Sukapaika river bed under the RTI in 2019 and then recently in June 2021. He also hasn’t heard back.If this evasion is any indicator, the Sukapaika Bachao Abhiyan (SBA) has its work cut out for them.SBA was born in 2016 under the leadership of Dr Rath and was an attempt to bring together the affected communities. The group gained momentum in 2019 and currently, more than 10,000 farmers, fisherfolk, doctors, engineers, advocates, educationists, are its members, said Dr Rath.In January 2020, over 8,000 villagers signed a petition asking to construct a sluice gate near Ayatpur to restart the flow of the river; this was submitted to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, said Sisir Das (65), a senior advocate and the legal advisor of the SBA, who resides in the riparian village of Praharajpur.They moved the State Human Rights Commission in August 2020, citing the drastic impacts on the health and livelihood of around 10 lakh people. They had also moved the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in January 2021 under Sections 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 of the NGT Act, 2010 appealing the tribunal to direct the Govt of Odisha to reopen the river mouth, according to Sisir.Riparian community members devising strategies to revive the river Sukapaika during a meeting at Bodhapur village in April this year (Picture credit - Roshan Rath)In January 2021, a team of officials from the Revenue and Water Resources Departments, led by district collector Bhabani Shankar Chayini, visited the river in its 27km stretch – from its origin till the river joins the parent river Mahanadi – to take stock of the situation. Chayini directed the concerned revenue authorities to take immediate steps to clear the encroachments. The SBA also moved the Water Resource Department Secretary Anu Garg in February 2021, following which, the department officials visited the river and prepared an action plan of Rs 44 crore for its revival, pointed out Rath.In a review meeting presided over by Cuttack MP Bhartuhari Mahatab on July 2 this year, Chayini had directed the Water Resources Department to prepare a detailed project report to carry the revival plan forward. While the Cuttack district collector and the concerned engineer could not be contacted for their take on the issue, those fighting for the river know that clearing the encroachments is going to be the government’s biggest challenge. According to Dr Rath, many people have obtained pattas on the river bed by greasing the palms of some officials. Ironically, an alleged case of encroachment may have happened in Rath’s own backyard. A pond was built at Bodhapur village in the middle of river Sukapaika in 2019 at an expenditure of Rs 16 lakh. According to Dr Rath, while the pond is of immense benefit to the people, its construction on the river bed is illegal and has been done without the permission of the Revenue Department.Bodhapur Sarpanch Chagala Behera, however, maintained that the pond has not been constructed on the river bed, but on the river bank on unused government land demarcated by the tehsildar. It’s not illegal and is the sole source of water for the people and animals in the village, especially during the harsh summers, he said. He added that the panchayat is going to lease out the pond for fish farming soon. The SBA and other community members are cautiously optimistic to see their efforts starting to move some pieces on the board, but they are aware it’s going to be a difficult fight and close to home. The villagers have warned that they will take to the streets if the government fails to revive the river with immediate effect. They have already lost too much.This article is a part of a 101Reporters' series on The Promise Of Commons. In this series, we will explore how judicious management of shared public resources can help the ecosystem as well as the communities inhabiting it.

Hundreds of villages in Odisha languish at the shores of the dying Sukapaika river

Within a generation, a dying river changed the destinies of lakhs of people living along its shore, decimating livelihoods and sending the local ecology into a spiral. Bhubaneswar: Until the 70s, Bainshi Chandra Behera (65) had lived well off fishing in Bodhapur in Odisha’s Cuttack district. He would ply his trade on Sukapaika, a distributary of Mahanadi, India’s sixth-largest river. As Sukapaika began to die an unnatural death, Behera’s sole source of livelihood also dried up. He now works as a labourer for a Paradip-based fish trader.Once at the centre of the prosperity and rich cultural heritage of around 10 lakh people living along its 27-km stretch, the river has turned into a curse for its riparian villages, thanks to the imprudent human actions, said Nrusingha Prasad Das (63), a resident of the same village. The river passes through 425 villages under 26 panchayats in three blocks — Cuttack Sadar, Nischintakoili and Raghunathpur — said Dr PC Rath (67), a renowned cardiologist and a native of Bodhapur. He talks about the decline of the fortunes of the people living there as if it were the “death of a civilisation”.“When a river dies, a civilization dies with it, and these 400 odd villages meet the same fate.” “The encroachers took the opportunity of the dry river bed where they began their illegal constructions leading to its siltation and complete death in the next couple of decades,” Dr Rath lamented.A concerned citizen and environmentalist, Rath is at the helm of the Sukapaika Bachao Abhiyan (SBA), the community initiative to revive the river and engages in advocacy with the government and bureaucracy.Sukapaika originates and terminates within Cuttack district, running from Ayatapur village to Tarapur, said Smita Nayak, who has done extensive research on natural resources of the region, including water. In 1952, the government constructed, as a flood control measure, an embankment at Ayatapur. Five years later, around 290 km upstream of it, the Hirakud dam in Sambalpur district and then, around 25 km upstream of it a barrage at Naraj in Cuttack district came up, said Nayak, who is also the director of a non-profit “Orissa Rural Reconstruction Association (ORRA)” and working for livelihood enhancement of people affected by climate change and manmade disasters.These structures together were meant to control floods but they considerably reduced the water flowing into Sukapaika. Priya Ranjan Sahu, a senior journalist and an environmental activist based in Odisha said, “According to studies, large dams tend to alter geography and hydrological regimes and they involve issues of control, power and political relations, social justice and equity. While Farakka, Baglihar, Almatti, Narmada are some examples, Hirakud dam is a fresh addition. While it has already altered the local environment and badly impacted the riparian communities, it is also instrumental in killing river Sukapaika around 290 km downstream.”A farmer in Bodhapur points to the takeover of his land by hyacinths (Picture credit - Priya Ranjan Sahu)Fishing and farming livelihoods at risk“The river is mostly dry. There is no water flowing through it now”, said Ananta Mallick (66), a farmer of riparian Narada Goudagaon village under Praharajpur panchayat in Cuttack Sadar block. What little water there is is the remnants of rainwater, found in shallow, stagnant patches.Nrusingha Prasad Das (63) is a villager of Bodhapur that was home to 800-odd fishers who have lost their livelihood over the years and most of whom are working as migrant labourers. “The river was rich with a variety of fishes like Rohi and Bhakura,” said Das reminiscing about his childhood when he had once teamed up with his neighbours to catch a huge Vecti fish weighing around 40 kg.It’s not just the fisherfolk, but thousands of farmers are now unable to sustain agricultural activities, caught between water scarcity, flooding and stagnation, said SBA secretary Roshan Rath, who also hails from Bodhapur.Water levels in the region have depleted considerably with the drying river. Almost all the ponds, wells and tube-wells, which used to draw water throughout the year, go dry by January, said Das, adding that lift irrigation points of more than 50 villages downstream are lying defunct. The tube-wells that used to draw water at 100 feet have to go deeper, to as far as 300 feet to get water.With the freshwater flow disrupted, salinity in the land and in water bodies is increasing rapidly even though the sea (at Paradip) is around 60 km away, Das said. The water from wells and tube-wells here is unfit for consumption due to excessive iron and arsenic content, he added.On the other hand, according to Ananta Mallick (66), a farmer of Narada Goudagaon village, in his village and neighbouring Samantarapur village under Kishannagar panchayat, every year more than 1,000 acres of farmland remain submerged for around one and half months during the rainy season as there is no drainage channel. The crops decompose in the stagnant water.“Around four decades ago, my father used to harvest around 100 quintals of paddy and around three quintals of black gram and green gram every year when the river was flowing. Now, I hardly manage to harvest 10 quintals of paddy from the same land,” Mallick lamented.Rivers like Sukapaika, which originate from a river and rejoin the same river, have a natural rhythm that drains out excessive water, said Sahu. Unfortunately, the river that could have evacuated the flood water naturally became the victim of the shortsightedness of the government officials, he lamented.There is a proven risk in embankments. Sahu warned that if immediate measures are not taken to ensure free-flow of the river, nature might reclaim its drainage route and a Kosi flood-type situation may repeat here. In 2008, embankments on the river Kosi in Nepal gave way, believed to have been weakened by decades of silt deposition. The breach caused the river to change course and it shifted eastward by over 100 km. It flooded large swathes of Bihar and Nepal, displacing more than 3.5 million Indians.[Read part two of this story to know more about community action to revive the river]This article is a part of a 101Reporters' series on The Promise Of Commons. In this series, we will explore how judicious management of shared public resources can help the ecosystem as well as the communities inhabiting it.