Shame, worthlessness and a sense of betrayal grips me whenever pass through Deeporbeel. Why? I will explain but first things first. Deportees is a wetland situated in the western side of Guwahati, around 25 km from the city center. The NH-37 passes a little distance away from the eastern margin of the Bell while the Rand Reserve forest and the Meghalaya hills surround the southern part. Chances are that you have passed through Deeporbeel, if you are going to catch a flight at Priya Gopinath Bordon International Airport. An area of 4000 hectares of this wetland was declared a Ramsay site in 2002. A Ramsay Site is a wetland designated of international importance under the Ramsay Convention. A part of this site (4.14 sq km.) was declared as wildlife sanctuary in 2009. Due to the rich birdlife of this wetland, it has been designated as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by Birdlife International since 2004. To give you a context about its biodiversity, the wetland is home to the biggest land animal, the elephant, infect it is said that the name Deeporbeel has an elephant origin. In Sanskrit, “diva” means elephant, and “Bell” is a local term used to denote a wetland. Apart from elephants, this wetland is famous for its birdlife. More than 200 species of birds are known from the wetland, with many migratory species visiting Deportee in winter. One of these bird species is the very rare and endangered Greater Adjutant Stork, whose global population is less than 2000 individuals. It is also home to around 59 species of phytoplanktons, 170 species of Zooplankton, 315 species of aquatic invertebrates, 54 species of fishes, 20 species of amphibians, 40 species of reptiles, including the largest venomous snake in the world, the King Cobra. The socio-economic survey conducted in the fourteen villages in the Deportee fringe unveils that 22.63% of the people are dependent on the natural resources of the wetland for their livelihood, 17.3% of the people are partially dependent and 45-56% of the families depend on the wetland for fodder for their domestic animals. Around 1200 families living around the wetland are directly or indirectly dependent on Deportee for livelihood.
I was once a regular visitor to this wetland, like many of you. It all started in the year 2010 when I saw a red snake, that I had never seen before. I still remember that day, it was sometime in early June when on a boat ride on the Deportee, late in the evening, I saw a snake amongst water hyacinth vegetation, hanging its head upright. I had no clue of what it was! For the past few years, I had been working and learning about snakes of Northeast India and not a single guide book or photographs I saw matched with the snake. As all these were playing in my mind, the snake took the chance and disappeared. The feeling was one that I can never forget, I was very angry with God, “Why did you show me the snake when you did not want me to see it in details?” I asked, I did a Google Scholar search with the key word Deep or beef which gave me 851 search results. For those of you who do not know what Google Scholar is, it has a specialized search engine by Google, which shows result regarding research articles. Now that we know, a lot of research effort has been invested on Deeporbeel, than why the wetland is degrading with every passing year? Is it because the research did not come up with substantial solution or while making conservation action plan for Deeporbeel, these research works were not accounted for? Whatever be it, we are not seeing Deeporbeel getting rejuvenated. Again, Deeporbeel is not the one which is away from limelight. A big archive of popular and news articles are present in the worldwide web on various issues of Deportee, such as issues related to water quality, livelihood to jumbos being run over by train. So how come we miss acting for this wetland? Maybe it is because of people like me, who were friends with the wetland in its better times, used its resources for personal gain starting from research work to photographing its biodiversity are now nowhere to be seen. Now when “Alta”(grandmother) is ill, I have no time for her! I do not know if it is the time or the feeling of guilt that do not let me see her in the eye. Is it because, I realize that I could have done a lot more for her rather than attending a marathon of meetings on her name and munching away on snacks and nuts.
Now whenever, I have to cross the Bell, I feel like the old lady is bellowing as hard as she can but that her voice has gone so low due to her ever deteriorating health that we hardly can hear her. It is as if her mammies has nothing left to feed her children, its biodiversity, but they are still suckling it in a hope. Yes, it is all about hope. The last thing that came out of the Pandora’s box was hope. Should we still be hopeful, yes of course! We have to bank on the budding generation and hope that they could undo some of those which we have done. But will it be fair on them to leave everything on their shoulders, I do not think so. We can make a huge difference by discussing some pragmatic solution and not live in fantasies. Organizations and individuals working on Deportee to achieve same goal should
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