Little more than a decade ago, I was researching peoples’ experiences through Cyclone Sidr and its impact at a tiny village near the mouth of the Boleshwar River and at the edge of the Sundarbans.
I lived in that village for 10 months and interacted with its people. The village was yet to be connected to the national electric grid and watching music videos on electric battery charged televisions at the tea stalls happened to be the only public (men only) entertainment in that area. One evening, I was out in a local tea stall, observing people sitting in a dark corner. I met Sobur there, a short, strong-built fisherman in his mid-20s.
I was an easily recognisable outsider and thus an obvious subject to draw attention to. I always took advantage of my ‘new in the village’ eagerness and met more and more people every day and expressed interests to learn about their everyday lives in the rhythm of tides, waves, and cyclones.
I did the same with Sobur. At one point in our discussion, I asked him what he had been doing during Sidr. I was very surprised to learn that despite knowing about the cyclone warning he had been fishing at the mouth of the river Boleshwar.
"I realised, for people like Sobur, who must work every day for their next meal, comprehensive cyclone preparedness does not make much sense as their desperation to live pushes them to go beyond the margin irrespective of the circumstances"
Seeing my expression of surprise, he continued that there had been a tsunami false alarm just a month before Sidr struck. Moreover, his family lives from hand to mouth and he is the only breadwinner for four dependents. He does not have any savings and his family will starve if he does not go to work.
I realised, for people like Sobur, who must work every day for their next meal, comprehensive cyclone preparedness does not make much sense as their desperation to live pushes them to go beyond the margin irrespective of the circumstances.
Sobur was born in a poor fishing family. His father lost their home and land to riverbank erosion and shelter on the embankment. He watched his father fishing in the Boleshwar River, accompanied him since his boyhood, and has grown up as a fisherman. He has never gone to school and has no skills of cultivation. But he has enormous fishing experience both in the river and out to sea.
Everyday struggle in a poverty lashed life taught Sobur to maintain connections with the power loop of the society. He became a member of a powerful political party before reaching his adulthood. The rivalry triggered by political enmity led his political opponents to trap him in a firearm possession case.
A firearm, found hidden in a bush one kilometre away from Sobur’s home, was recovered under his name. He was sent to prison summarily and the case was never forwarded to the court. After serving four and half years, he met some high-ranking visitors to whom he explained his issue. He was bailed within a month and his case has remained pending ever since.
Sobur came back to his home and restarted fishing. By then his party was in power and he had no problems whatsoever. Like many survivors of Sidr, Sobur was aware of the forecast. Cyclone warnings are not new to him and he never had the luxury to act on warnings.
"Though almost ninety percent of the fishermen in the Boleshwar River had a similar fate as Sobur, their voices have been silenced by muscle power"
He went on finishing consoling his desperation and helplessness by submitting to God. However, it was beyond his worst nightmare when a twenty feet wall of water surged through his village. When the cyclone was over, Sobur, along with the other survivors, found himself in the wreckage of a living hell.
He did not find even a small piece of wood from his boats that he could recycle as firewood and he did not have any savings to reinitiate his fishing business. So, he was fortunate to receive a boat and a net from an NGO and he managed a small amount of dadon from his previous mohajon.
He started his business again with these small grants. Within a year, he had lost some of his floating nets when they became tangled in fixed fishing net structures. This loss was one and a half times the money that he had taken as dadon and it now became very difficult for him to sustain his activities while the fixed fishing nets (locally known as dhora jal) grew bigger and his losses became a regular event.
Local fishermen organised themselves and went to local administration and politicians. Though installing fixed fishing nets are illegal, none stood up by their side as their opposition here was very powerful both financially and politically. Though almost ninety percent of the fishermen in the Boleshwar River had a similar fate as Sobur, their voices have been silenced by muscle power.
Sobur sold his last resort, homestead land, moved back to the embankment, and bought a small piece of agricultural land. A little more than one year after Sidr, as his first crop was flowering, this village was again hit by another cyclone, called Aila. He sold his first crop. One influential neighbour evicted him from his land using his political influence.
To make a stronghold on that piece of land, his neighbour influenced the administration to revive the old unresolved case of firearm possession against Sobur. He was bailed after four months. But, he had to sell off his land to pay the fees of the court and his lawyer.
In jail he was approached by a dacoit gang leader, who offered him membership of his gang. Sobur’s destitution, frustration and anger triggered a feeling of revenge against Halim and Rob. Therefore, instead of going to a big city to find a job, he joined that gang of bandits in the Sundarbans.
He started taking ransoms and extorting from other forest users. However, early in April 2010 he was cornered by some of his victims, they blinded him, and he was handed over to police custody. During my ten-months stay at my field site, Sobur was the eighth dacoit I heard of being caught by the community and all of them were blinded in this way.
Sobur is just an example of the social construction of vulnerabilities. Many similar stories remain unnoticed. The superiority of our institutional knowledge captivates our wisdom to understand the everyday life and practicalities of cyclone survivors.
We, an elite from elsewhere, who visit a place following an extreme event only see the big waves. But people like Sobur who cannot accumulate their strength to withstand those big waves due to a tormented daily existence mostly remain unnoticed.
MD Nadiruzzaman is working at CLISEC Research Group, Centre for Earth System and Sustainability (CEN), Hamburg University, Germany. He has keen interests on climate change adaptation, politics and governance. He could be reached at [email protected]
.
