Sanskrita B

Dhemaji/Guwahati: As the eldest child, Gomeshwar Kardong of Medhi Pamua village in Assam’s Dhemaji district is responsible for providing for his family. “I have been working since I was very young, as I had to provide for my mother and younger brother,” Kardong, 25, who lost his father when he was six years old, told IndiaSpend.
But, Kardong says, it is now risky for farmers like him to invest their time and effort in paddy farming, once the mainstay of their livelihood, because every year fl...

One December afternoon, Sunita Doley sat outside her house, recalling several instances when floods had wreaked havoc in the village she grew up in. She recollects a specific incident from 2021. “There was knee-deep to neck-deep water that year,” Doley says. A woman from Doley’s village was in an advanced stage of her pregnancy. Community health officers were informed about her condition but there was no chance of an ambulance reaching as the village was cut off due to the floods.
Not wasting...

The Guwahati High Court criticised charges of rape and child sexual abuse against many of more than 3,000 men arrested in Assam in less than two weeks for marrying underage women. The chief minister’s ‘war’ on child marriage, focusses on marginalised minorities, particularly Muslims and devastates families. Mothers with young children are without support, as husbands and fathers are jailed. The solution to child marriage, national experience shows, lies in schools, healthcare and female emanc...

To adapt and reduce disaster risk, the indigenous Mising community in Assam constructs and lives in traditional flood-resilient houses called chang ghors that are perched above the ground on bamboo stilts.
Assam’s Dhemaji district which borders Arunachal Pradesh is one of India’s most flood-prone areas. Villages along the banks of the river Brahmaputra are inhabited mostly by the indigenous Mising community who live with the fear of losing their property and livestock every year. Besides, the...

Kohima/Chümoukedima/Dimapur/Guwahati: Every morning, 42-year-old Loni Yalie neatly places vegetables, fruits, dry fish and a variety of edible worms at a spot in the Local Ground area in Nagaland's capital Kohima. After the death of her husband, Yalie has been the sole breadwinner for her three school-going children. "I don't know how to read and write," Yalie, who belongs to the indigenous Lotha tribe, told IndiaSpend. "So, I couldn't have done any other job apart from street vending even if...

Demographic change in one small state is used as a red flag in its giant neighbour, Assam. But the history of Tripura and its people is much more than that.
High and hectic drama was a feature of Indian life in the months leading up to independence, and every corner of the subcontinent threw up its own variation on the theme. In the princely state of Tripura, tucked into the northeastern wing of the peninsula, the ruler Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya came to the decision to join the Indian Union ...

Rickshaw puller Asmat Ali and construction worker Rafik Kazi were asked by the Assam government to prove their citizenship in quasi judicial bodies called foreigners’ tribunals. With the help of Guwahati-based lawyers who fought their cases pro bono, Ali and Kazi were declared Indians. Several hundreds still fight to prove their identities.

Mangaldai & Barpeta (Assam): On a humid September day, dressed in a loose, white shirt and worn trousers, 48-year-old Asmat Ali waited for the 3 pm boat t...

These magnificent sculptures are shrouded in mystery.
Under British rule in India, Tripura was a princely state ruled by the kings of the Manikya dynasty. Following India’s independence in 1947, Tripura merged with the country in 1949 and became a full-fledged state in 1971. Today, India’s third smallest state borders Bangladesh to its north, south, and west, and the Indian states of Assam and Mizoram to the east.
As a vacation destination, Tripura has not quite picked up or is pretty far off...

While cities expand rapidly, drainage systems fail to be developed accordingly, leading to prolonged flooding during intense rainfall.
The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) in New Delhi insists on facilitating groundwater recharge to store excess flood water.
The Assam State Action Plan 2.0, which is pending approval, focuses on mainstreaming climate action into urban infrastructure, governance and policy.
“There was water till my waist,” recalls Tarun Rajkhowa, a 70-year-old residen...

In 2020, the Centre trumpeted a resettlement plan in Tripura for Brus who fled violence in Mizoram in 1997. On the ground, little has changed for the community.

The headlines were ecstatic. One said, “Amit Shah leads historic resettlement of Bru refugees”. Another said, “For Bru refugees in Tripura, hope after years of struggle for settlement”. Yet another said, “How Solving 23-Year-Long Bru Refugee Crisis Is Shot In The Arm For BJP”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it “a special day” and...

“Aami korbo toh korbo ki?”—What can I even do?—a 45-year-old worker asked. She had been working in the Doloo tea estate, situated in the Cachar district of Assam, for close to six years. Like her late husband, who had died a few years earlier, she had been a permanent employee. On 12 May, her future, as well as that of at least two thousand other workers, was thrown into peril when the Assam government began demolishing the Doloo estate, despite stiff opposition and swelling protests by its w...

The death in custody of a fish trader in Assam led to a series of violent events. An angry mob burnt down a police station, and police demolished the houses of his relatives, all accused of arson. Five including the dead man’s minor daughter were booked under an Indian law meant to be used against terrorists—the latest evidence of State bias and disproportionate action against minorities. The main accused in the burning of the police station was hit by a police vehicle, allegedly during an es...

Nur and Sahera Hussain spent 18 months at a detention centre for illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam. Sahera kept their two minor children with her in the jail-like facility. A year since they were found to be bonafide Indian citizens and released, they are struggling to rebuild their lives. Tens of thousands have similarly left Assam’s detention centres, or are waiting for a tribunal verdict, still haunted by fears of dispossession and statelessness

Guwahati: On a cold winter morning in ...

GUWAHATI : As the sun sets on a pleasant March evening in Dambuk–34km from Roing, the last major township in the northeastern frontier of India–Toni Borang, a robust 49-year-old man, stands tall in a floppy sun hat, scanning his 10-acre orange orchard.
For farmers in Dambuk, a hilly valley in the eastern Himalayan foothills of Arunachal Pradesh, cultivating oranges has been a way of life for years. Borang is one such farmer whose orchard has earned him a small fortune. If the fruits are good,...

In Assam’s Deepor Beel Wildlife Sanctuary, a joint effort between local volunteers and forest officials is protecting elephants from train hits.

Rapid urbanisation around Deepor Beel, the only Ramsar site in Assam, has led to habitat fragmentation of elephants, who have for years used the wetland for bathing in its water, feeding on its aquatic plants, and relaxing.

According to local community members, loss of forest cover in the adjoining Rani Reserve Forest, and pollution in Deepor Beel, h...