Guwahati, Assam: Generations of Golak Das’s family have lived in Keotpara, a village near Deepor Beel, a permanent freshwater wetland occupying just over 4 sq km on the fringe of  Guwahati city in Assam. 

Das belongs to one of the 850 fishing families whose lives are intertwined with the fate of the wetland, increasingly under siege from urbanisation and pollution, and representing the steady.

“Perhaps our community is as old as the beel (wetland) itself,” Das said.

Das is the secretary of Deepor Beel Paaspara Samabay Samiti Limited, a cooperative society that fights for the rights of the fishermen who live close to the wetland. 

It is hard for Das to imagine a different occupation—fishing is what he grew up learning from his father. “I used to accompany him to the beel when I was a young boy,” Das said. “We would drink this water and catch a variety of fish.”

The fishing community near Deepor Beel belongs to the marginalised Kaibarta community, recognised as a scheduled caste in Assam, depending heavily on fishing for their livelihood, besides allied activities such as weaving or repairing fishing nets, constructing boats and selling fish. “It is our only way of survival,” Das said.

India has lost nearly one third of natural wetlands to urbanisation and pollution over the past four decades. 

In 2018, the first-ever Global Wetland Outlook published by the Ramsar Convention estimated that global wetlands were reducing three times faster than forests. 

Wetlands are threatened by reclamation and degradation through drainage and landfill, pollution (discharge of domestic and industrial effluents, disposal of solid wastes), over-exploitation of natural resources resulting in loss of biodiversity and disruption in ecosystem services provided by wetlands.

A Legacy Of Protection

Members of Deepor Beel’s fishing community told Article 14 that their ancestors had settled in the vicinity of the wetland at least four to five generations earlier, protecting it for decades. 

In 2009, when the wetland was notified as a wildlife sanctuary, the local fishermen were neither informed nor provided with alternative livelihood opportunities, they said. 

Das said they received intimation from the government in 1989 that a portion of Deepor Beel would be converted into a wildlife sanctuary, but eventually when it was finally notified as one in 2009, they weren’t informed or consulted, nor any alternative livelihood solutions discussed.  

In September 2023, the fisherfolk, through their cooperative society, filed a petition in the Supreme Court, demanding that the fishing rights of the fishermen who live near Deepor Beel be protected and legally mandated. The fisherfolk earlier held a lease from the state government over fishing rights in the wetland, but that was cancelled in the 1990s.  

Far from being protected, the wetland has since deteriorated from the unbridled dumping of solid waste and effluents from the city of one million as Guwahati’s outback areas transformed into urbanised suburbs, they said, concerns mirrored by environmentalists. 

According to the 1971 census, the population of Guwahati metropolitan area was just under 300,000 and in 2011, when India conducted its last census, it was estimated to be about 1 million.

While the Indian Environment (Protection) Act of 1986 provides for protection and improvement of the environment including wetlands, and though the National Environment Policy of 2006 recognised the ecosystem services provided by wetlands and emphasises the need to set up a regulatory mechanism for all wetlands to maintain their ecological character, the city’s municipality used areas very close to the Deepor Beel as garbage dumping grounds.

The Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017 notified by the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEF&CC) under the provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act serve as a regulatory framework for conservation and management of wetlands in India. These too have been ignored in Deepor Beel as the site was degraded by municipal waste and construction activities.  

In 2023, Guwahati-based conservationist Pramod Kalita filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Gauhati high court seeking the protection of Deepor Beel, on grounds that, among other things, “uncontrolled dumping of waste and sewage” was “threatening its very existence”.

The PIL said the “pristine water body” held immense importance for the state of Assam, for it was home to rare and endangered species of plants, animals and birds. 

The entire waste collected from Guwahati city by the municipality is dumped at a site in Belortol, a locality in close proximity to Deepor Beel. Kalita, who filed the PIL, said that the waste has been dumped unscientifically at the site, its pollutants and leachates harming the wetland. 

“We want the dumping ground to be shifted elsewhere as it impacts the health of the wetland,” Kalita told Article 14.

Deepor Beel is the only wetland in Assam that is listed as a Ramsar site, making it a wetland of international importance for its unique type of aquatic ecosystem and biological diversity. There are currently over 2,400 Ramsar Sites around the world and India has 80 Ramsar sites covering an area of 1.33 million hectares.

Yet, no proper demarcation of the wetland’s boundaries was undertaken, making it vulnerable to development and construction activities in and around the wetland.

Pollution, Urbanisation

Deepor Beel is inhabited by a variety of fish and bird species. It is visited by several migratory birds, and is home to a large number of aquatic plants and vegetables. 

In 2002, Deepor Beel was listed as a wetland under the Ramsar Convention of 1971, named after the Iranian city where the accord was first adopted. Deepor Beel’s designation as a Ramsar site was meant to enable conservation measures to be undertaken based on its “biological and environmental importance”, according to the listing citation. 

Then, in 2009, the 4.1 sq km area of Deepor Beel was notified as a wildlife sanctuary by the Assam government.

Despite these protections, conservationists and the fishing community said Deepor Beel was being slowly destroyed. 

Guwahati city’s drainage system is linked to Deepor Beel. A confluence of three rivers, the Basistha, Bahini and Bharalu, is located at the wetland, and these rivers bring the entire city’s pollutants to accumulate at the Ramsar site. 

From 2006 to 2021, the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) dumped its daily collection of 550 tonnes of solid waste, or about 62 truckloads, at a 24-hectare site located in Boragaon, 500 metres east of Deepor Beel. This site was closed following a 2019 order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in response to RTI activist Rohit Choudhury’s petition in 2014 seeking an immediate end to garbage dumping here.

The NGT ordered in May 2019 that the dumping site be shifted from Boragaon by June 2019. However, it was only in 2021, two years after the NGT order, that the GMC stopped the transfer of the state capital’s solid waste to Boragaon. 

That did not resolve the problem. Unable to use the Boragaon site, the municipality began to instead dump Guwahati’s waste at Belortol in Paschim Boragaon, which, too, is in close proximity to Deepor Beel—just 1 km away.

Guwahati’s municipal commissioner Megha Nidhi Dahal told Article 14 that the older dumping ground at Boragaon was thought to be contributing to the pollution in Deepor Beel. 

“That dumping ground has been shut down and the biomining of that legacy waste is ongoing,” he said. “There is no fresh waste that is getting to Deepor Beel.” 

The GMC estimated that there was about 1.5 million metric tons of “legacy waste” lying at the older dumping ground, of which about 600,000 metric tons have been processed, the remaining to be processed and the land remediated by 2026.

The new dump site at Belortol, Dahal said, is a “proper scientific waste management facility”, functional for two years, with 150,000 lakh metric tons of waste accumulating over this time. “This has become legacy waste too,” Dahal said.

The GMC plans to process about 300 tons of waste per day at Belortol. The municipal commissioner said the Belortol site is cordoned off with an embankment, and “there is no way this waste is getting mixed up with the water which may eventually lead to pollution in Deepor Beel”.

A year-long study in 2023 by the state’s pollution control board revealed that the water of Deepor Beel was contaminated, its pH value indicating high alkalinity and its dissolved oxygen levels low, affecting survival rates of aquatic organisms. The dumping site in Belortol thus posed serious threats to the survival of the diverse range of aquatic species of the wetland, the study found. 

Environmentalists noted that the GMC follows improper disposal measures at the site near the wetland. “The waste is non-segregated at its source, and it remains untreated at the dumping ground,” said Kalita, who grew up near Deepor Beel.  “It  continuously emits poisonous gases, and the pollutants tend to accumulate in the wetland.” 

Das, from the fishing community, said he remembered when the wetland was a clean and pristine water source. “Now it is full of plastic,” he said. “You won’t even want to touch the water. It’s so dirty.”

Kalita pointed out that while pollution is one major problem that plagues Deepor Beel, the other issue is also rapid urbanisation of the adjoining and surrounding areas. 

Local fishermen told Article 14 of the “unimaginable” development activities in the vicinity in recent years. They said that a railway line, a busy road leading to the Guwahati airport and a rash of new buildings had all impacted the natural ecosystem of the wetland. 

In December 2023, the Assam state government unveiled a ‘beautification plan’ for Deepor Beel, including a cycling track, boating facilities, and other tourist amenities at the site.

Das and others from the fishing community have reservations about the government’s plan. “If they make a cycle track around the wetland, the wetland will shrink further, and will eventually become a fishery,” said Das. “It’s a wetland, you cannot construct things around it.”

Article 14 reached out to the divisional forest officer of the Guwahati wildlife division, and to West Guwahati’s member of the legislative assembly Ramendra Narayan Kalita for a comment regarding the condition of Deepor Beel, but neither responded to multiple messages on their mobile phones.   

On whether the Pamohi river and its channels may be carrying sewage from the city into Deepor Beel, municipal commissioner Dahal said the government was in the process of setting up sewage treatment plants in many areas to resolve such a possibility.  

No Official Boundaries For This Ramsar Site 

According to conservationist Kalita and local fishermen, no efforts were made to clearly draw the boundaries of the wetland even after its listing as a Ramsar site in 2002. 

The dumping ground for garbage is located within a 1-km distance from the wetland, an approximation since there was never any demarcation of how much of the area is part of the Ramsar site. “Therefore, some land comes under the revenue department, other parts under the municipality and forest department,” Kalita said.  “Until the demarcation is made, we don’t know which area is Deepor Beel and which isn’t.”

Kalita said the wetland is in fact much larger than the 4 sq km wildlife sanctuary area, originally stretching as far as Kamakhya railway station, located approximately 3 km away, and encompassing the Guwahati engineering college area.

About his PIL in the Gauhati high court filed in 2023 for the protection of Deepor Beel, Kalita said the last HC order was for the wetland boundaries to be demarcated. 

Kalita explained that Deepor Beel has two parts, one being the wildlife sanctuary area that was demarcated in May 2014. The area under the Ramsar site which was mapped, however, has not been demarcated.

“If and when the Ramsar site is demarcated,” he said, “then certain constructions and beautification work around the boundaries and edges of Deepor Beel would be considered illegal.”

‘Varieties Of Fish No Longer Exist’ 

Meanwhile, the fishing community has noticed a decline in the variety and size of their catch. 

“The fish population is dwindling,” said 60-year-old Niren Kumar Das, another resident of Keotpara. Some local and some rare varieties, including the pabhua (Indian butter catfish), dorikona (scissortail rasbora) and bami (eel), had all disappeared, he said. “These were fishes that were there in abundance. But now they no longer exist.”

Niren Kumar Das worries about whether his community would be able to continue fishing. Since Deepor Beel’s notification as a wildlife sanctuary, the community’s fishing rights have remained ambiguous. 

Currently, fishing in the core wildlife sanctuary area of the wetland is prohibited by the forest department. While the fisherfolk are allowed to fish in the other areas of the wetland, they say that their fishing rights aren’t legally defined. 

Seema Talukdar, a Guwahati-based researcher and ecologist with research group 7Weaves, said when an area is declared protected as a wildlife sanctuary, the livelihoods of indigenous people living around it should be considered. “When Deepor Beel was notified as a wildlife sanctuary, I don’t think there was any alternate livelihood solution laid down for the fishing community,” she said. 

According to the local fisherfolk, in 1989, a notification first came from the government regarding converting a part of Deepor Beel into a wildlife sanctuary. In 1994, the district commissioner (DC) gave a report to the government that the fishermen have a right over the wetland for fishing purposes. 

In 2002, the government ordered that it would not go ahead with declaring a portion of Deepor Beel a wildlife sanctuary because no alternative livelihood was found for the fishermen. 

Then, some months later, the government recalled that order, giving neither intimation nor prior notice to the fishermen.

In 2009, the government declared 4.1 sq km of the wetland as a wildlife sanctuary. 

According to the cooperative’s petition in the SC, in response to a challenge in the Gauhati high court, a single judge bench said in 2018 that the place could not be declared a wildlife sanctuary until the fishermen were granted alternative occupations. The state government challenged the single judge’s order, and a division bench in the Gauhati high court subsequently allowed the appeal of the government and set aside the order passed by the single judge in 2018.

According to the petition, the division bench said a portion of Deepor Beel may be declared a wildlife sanctuary, and that the fishermen couldn’t establish their claim of traditional fishing rights over the wetland. 

The high court said the Assam Fisheries Department Corporation had earlier entered into a seven-year lease agreement granting the community fishing rights, a lease that was later cancelled. 

Golak Das told Article 14 that even before the lease with the fisheries department, the fisherfolk used to pay a fee to the revenue department to be able to fish. He conceded that the community did not have documents dating to the time when they received receipts for payments made to the revenue department. 

“Irrespective of the fact that they used to pay a lease rent to the fisheries, generations of their community have been fishing in the wetland, conserving and protecting it like bodyguards,” conservationist Kalita said.  

The petitioners were keen to point out that the division bench’s order allowed them to “assert their claim, if any,” as per sections 18A(2) and 19 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which pertain to the settlement of rights of affected persons, and the state government’s duty to make alternative arrangements for making available fuel, fodder and other forest produce to the persons affected. 

The cooperative’s special writ petition appealing against that HC order is now pending before the Supreme Court. 

Assam Government Seeks To Denotify Sanctuary

While the fishing community wants their rights within Deepor Beel to be defined, they said this should not be at the cost of denotifying the wetland as a wildlife sanctuary.

In March 2024, the Assam cabinet decided to denotify Deepor Beel as a wildlife sanctuary, a move stalled by a Gauhati high court order in April.

Denotification would allow the fishermen to once again fish in what is now the core area of the wetland, but community members told Article 14 that denotifying the sanctuary would further destroy the ecology of the wetland. “If it is developed for eco-tourism or a resort or a cycling track, then there will be no protection over that area,” Niren Kumar Das said. It is only when the place is a designated and protected wildlife area that its ecosystem would be protected, he said. 

The fishing community said members were aware their livelihood rights remain protected under the Wildlife Protection Act. According to Section 26 A of the Act, the limits of the area of a water body to be included within the sanctuary will be determined in consultation with the chief naval hydrographer, “after taking adequate measures to protect the occupational interests of the local fishermen”.

Niren Kumar Das said it is “made to look” as if the health of the beel was adversely affected due to fishing activity and on account of the fishing community’s dependence on the beel for livelihood. “That is not the case,” he said. “We have taken a lot of initiatives to sustainably coexist with the wetland.” He said it was the construction of apartments and the garbage dump that affected the wetland’s ecology.  

Kalita, the conservationist, said it was important for the government and the forest authorities to recognise that the fishing community has in fact helped conserve the wetland through their traditional knowledge. “It is always the marginalised communities that are unjustly castigated for the decline of an ecosystem,” Kalita said, “but they should be protected as well.”

In fact, the fishermen often end up cleaning the wetland. They see large quantities of plastic floating on the wetland when they are fishing, and try to collect the plastic, said Golak Das. Also, the fishermen still use traditional wooden boats, not motor boats.

According to Seema Talukdar of 7Weaves, more comprehensive studies need to be  done on the fishing community of Deepor Beel. “Their fishing is based on their traditional knowledge which they have acquired by living in the vicinity of the beel for ages—they do not use any modern technologies—and yet their techniques are scientific enough,” Talukdar said.

The president of the Deeporbeel Paaspara Samabay Samiti, also named Golak Das, said, “What will the tourists come here for? When there aren’t enough birds and fishes like before, when the water is so dirty…what will they see?” Before attempting to turn the area into a tourist spot, authorities should instead clean the waterbody and stop all further pollution, he said. 

The fishermen said that the government hasn’t done anything for them so far. “They should have ensured that our rights are intact before making a portion of this wetland a wildlife sanctuary,” Niren Kumar Das said, adding that while they were  worried about their livelihoods, they were not opposed to the notification as a wildlife sanctuary.

 “We just want our rights, we wish to continue fishing in this area peacefully.”

(Sanskrita Bharadwaj is an independent journalist from Assam.)  

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