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BOOK REVIEW 
  

Riverine Ecology of Eastern and North-Eastern India 
 

Arupjyoti Saikia  
 
Madhurilata Basu, Rajat Roy & Ranabir Samaddar, eds. 2018. Political Ecology 
of Survival: Life and Labour in the River Islands of East and North-East India, New 
Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, ISBN: 978-9352873616, pp. xvii+254 Rs. 925 
(Hardbound).  
 

How has humankind benefitted from 
our relentless pursuits to dominate and 
control Nature? For instance, are there 
long-term ecological benefits from 
those massive embankments which now 
crisscross much of the Indian 
subcontinent’s sprawling flood plains? 
On the other hand, many argue for 
more prudent strategies like living with 
the seasonal flooding that overwhelms 
much of Eastern and North-Eastern 
India. The Volume under review, 
Political Ecology of Survival: Life and Labour 
in the River Islands of East and North-East 
India is a much needed effort to 
understand these questions and the 
many challenges confronting both the 
people who inhabit the flood prone 

                                                        
 Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, 
Guwahati, 781039; arupjyotisaikia@gmail.com 

Copyright © Saikia 2020. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i1.99  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i1.99


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [138] 

 

plains of the Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems and the many 
governmental initiatives that have over the years been singularly aimed at 
trying to control floods.  

In the first essay, Mithilesh Kumar discusses the entwined social and 
economic conditions that prevail in the floodplains of Kosi river, a tributary 
of the Ganga. He focusses on the floods of 2008 to insightfully reveal how 
caste (especially the Mahadalit), land ownership, flood proneness, 
embankment construction and seasonal migration have shaped political 
mobilisation in the region. Sutirtha Bedajna’s essay on the Sundarbans ─ 
the dynamic deltaic edge of the Ganga system ─ offers us a detailed 
discussion on various ecological consequences and social tensions that have 
emerged from the reclamation efforts to settle in the highly dynamic and 
erosive riverine environment since the 1770s. Attempts to stabilise rice 
production in the Sundarbans through sustained embankment construction, 
if anything, Bedajna argues, has led to increased salinisation, which may 
force mass distress migration of 4.5 million inhabitants.. In the volume, 
three essays—on the districts of Nadia (Milan Datta and Madhurilata Basu), 
Mushidabad (Madhurilata Basu) and Malda (Milan Datta)—underline and 
highlight the aspects of uncertainty and tenuous life in the deltaic segments 
of the Ganga.These essays provide us a detailed account of how recurring 
floods, river bank erosion and state negligence aggravates poverty and 
exploitation. In particular, the essays offer compelling insights into the fate 
of the people who inhabit and pursue fragile livelihoods on the charlands — 
the temporary lands thrown up by the rivers.  

Three essays in the volume explore issues of flooding and river bank 
erosion in Assam valley, through which the Brahmaputra and its various 
tributaries course through. Gulshan Parveen points out how the recurring 
displacement of peasants from their lands, because of the tentativeness of 
the chars as a geological formation, has generated a crisis of citizenship. As 
the ‘nation-state is inseparably anchored within territory/land’(p.139), the 
sudden disappearance of land and the inevitable creation of landlessness by 
the rivers has placed a vast set of challenges before the government, who 
cannot effectively govern when both the populations and the land are 
constantly on the move. K.K. Chatradhara provides an excellent, albeit 
synoptic, review of the politics and ecological complications that have 
followed from the government’s decision to build a large dam on the 
Subansiri river, one of the arms of the Brahmaputra river. This is followed 
by an essay by historian Sajal Nag, who had earlier published an important 
work on bamboo famine of Mizoram. Nag offers a longterm view of the 
Barak by first outlining how the river was sought to be controlled by the 
British in the nineteenth century in their quest to capture the commerce of 



[139] Arupjyoti Saikia 

 

Bengal, which lay towards the west. The Barak, hence, was the fluvial means 
through which European capital and the British East India Company 
attempted to make deep inroads into a very complex eco-geography. The 
essay concludes with a compelling discussion on Tipamukh dam project 
that is to be built in Manipur. 

The concluding essay, though not central to the structure of the book, 
collates some of the key international water treaties which play an important 
role in Indian politics. These policy and legal instruments for the 
governance of rivers, as the author Shuvro Sarker avers, suggest the urgency 
and need for more scholarly attention. In sum, this volume, which brings 
together micro-studies and detailed research on dynamic deltaic segments 
of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin, makes for an important and 
significant addition to the study of India’s volatile Eastern rivers. The 
Calcutta Research Group (CRG), which is behind this important work, has 
in fact for years now been involved in trying to explore and debate the 
complicated world of migration, refugee flight and environmental 
degradation. Previous publications of the CRG have also asked similarly 
provocative and meaningful questions. This volume is an important 
outcome of this exercise and informs us on various aspects of Eastern 
rivers. It is very important for those keen to study India’s North East.  

 

 


