Aug. 8: Displaced from their homes and robbed of their source of livelihood by the Barak river, about 75 families from Sialtek village have been living on the brink — literally — for the past four years.

Comprising about 350 people, these families became destitutes when their tiny huts and farmlands were gobbled up by the turbulent river, which flows by their village. Since then, the villagers — mostly farmers and weavers — have been eking out a miserable existence on a small stretch of the embankment. Their homes are now improvised shacks on bamboo stilts.

Many of the children no longer go to school. Most of them do odd jobs like working in the fields, weaving and transporting construction materials. They are paid daily wages, with which they augment their meagre family incomes.

The hapless villagers say they have met political leaders and senior government officials for help, but in vain. One of the suggestions is that they be rehabilitated on nearby government-owned land.

Khirode Das, a 62-year-old weaver of cane baskets, said villagers had submitted a memorandum to former Cachar deputy commissioner Pradeep Das, who, in turn, asked officials of the land settlement department to select a plot to rehabilitate them.

Two plots, one in Nunchari and another in Telcharra, were earmarked by the district administration but the rehabilitation scheme did not progress further.

“Maps were drawn up and files laden with documents moved from office to office, but no worthwhile scheme or proposal has materialised so far,” Umesh Das, a 32-year-old carpenter, said.

The Katigorah block committee of the BJP recently took up cudgels for these homeless, landless people.

Nabendu Shekhar Nath, a block-level BJP leader and president of the Kathigorah development committee, submitted a memorandum to Cachar deputy commissioner G. Ganguli, urging the administration to speed up the process of tranferring land to all displaced people.

Another positive development was the water resources department drawing up two schemes with a budget of Rs 25 crore to stem erosion by the Barak, which has come to be known as Cachar’s river of sorrow.

A World Bank team that surveyed erosion-affected areas suggested the creation of an effective river-basin management organisation under the water resources department. It also asked for schemes to be executed in a decentralised manner after creating an erosion-monitoring system.