[The Bay of Bengal’s
coasts are under assault in every dimension: by water conflicts in the
Himalayas and by drilling for oil and gas in the deep sea. The bay is a sink of
pollution borne by the great rivers that spill into it, including the Ganges,
the Brahmaputra and the Salween. Dam construction in China and India threatens
downstream communities in India, Bangladesh and mainland Southeast Asia. With
sea level rising and deltaic lands subsiding, saltwater intrusion onto
farmlands has accelerated, with serious consequences for food production.]
By Sunil S. Amrith
 |
| @ World Atlas |
LONDON — NEARLY one in four people on earth live in the
countries that border the Bay of Bengal. The region is strategically vital to
Asia’s rising powers. Its low-lying littoral — including coastal regions of
eastern India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Sumatra —
is home to over half a billion people who are now acutely vulnerable to rising
sea levels. Storms are a constant threat; over the weekend, a cyclone, Phailin,
swept in from the bay to strike the coastal Indian state of Odisha, leading to
the evacuation of some 800,000 people.
The bay was once a
maritime highway between India and China, and then was shaped by monsoons and
migration as European powers exploited the region for its coffee, tea and
rubber. Today the bay is being reshaped again by the forces of population
growth and climate change.
The scale and pace of
these challenges demand urgent, regional cooperation. But first the countries
that ring the bay must rise above their political fault lines and embrace the
interconnectedness of their history.
The Bay of Bengal’s
coasts are under assault in every dimension: by water conflicts in the
Himalayas and by drilling for oil and gas in the deep sea. The bay is a sink of
pollution borne by the great rivers that spill into it, including the Ganges,
the Brahmaputra and the Salween. Dam construction in China and India threatens
downstream communities in India, Bangladesh and mainland Southeast Asia. With
sea level rising and deltaic lands subsiding, saltwater intrusion onto
farmlands has accelerated, with serious consequences for food production.
The bay’s turbulent
climate has played an outsize role in the region’s history. Sailors crossed its
waters from the earliest times; their trading routes linked India, China and
Southeast Asia for centuries. The bay’s natural bounty attracted the European
powers in the early modern era, making it an arena for imperial competition and
economic vitality. But the monsoons and their rainfall have always been
volatile: periodic droughts and dangerous storms have posed a recurrent threat
and shaped the region.
In the second half of
the 19th century, land-hungry investors in an expanding British Empire created
tighter connections across the bay. Migration reached huge proportions in the
age of the steamship. More than 25 million people crossed the bay between the
1870s and the 1930s; most of them were young men from southern and eastern
India destined for the tea estates of Sri Lanka, the rubber plantations of
Malaysia and the docks and rice mills of Myanmar. Combined with the concurrent
movement of Chinese to Southeast Asia, this was one of the world’s great
migrations, though much of it was circular rather than permanent.
This surge in migration
coincided with two of the worst cases in a millennium of the failure of
monsoons to bring needed rains. Especially intensive episodes of the phenomenon
known as El Niño — the periodic warming of surface waters in the equatorial
Pacific — brought drought to large sections of Asia in the 1870s and again in
the 1890s. In India, millions died in the famines that ensued. Thousands sought
survival overseas; many more moved locally. The people became more
interdependent.
Only families with
access to credit and wide enough social networks could take advantage of
opportunities overseas. Colonial law distinguished between groups who could
migrate and those who could not. For those who could not, the price of leaving
was often the servitude of indentured labor across the bay. Poverty was as
likely as sudden disaster to propel people’s journeys. Once patterns of
migration were established, they outlasted particular climatic or economic
conditions.
The global economic
depression of the 1930s, followed by the Second World War, stemmed migration
and trade. After winning independence from colonial rule in the 1940s, Asia’s
new states policed their contested borders and controlled migration. Like many
leaders of his generation, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru,
believed that modern science had “curbed to a large extent the tyranny and the
vagaries of nature.”
But the tyranny and the
vagaries of nature were not so easily subdued, and they have taken a dangerous
turn. Climate change inaugurates an unpredictable new phase in the life of the
Bay of Bengal. Scientists predict a rise in the frequency and intensity of the
bay’s notorious cyclones. Over the past decade, more than 18 million people
have been affected directly by tropical cyclones in Bangladesh, Myanmar and
Thailand alone.
At the same time,
socially if not politically, the bay today resembles the 1890s more than the
1950s. Intraregional migration has resumed. Coastal trade is booming. Old ports
that had fallen into decline have seen a revival: Sittwe in Myanmar; Chittagong
in Bangladesh; the coastal towns of Tamil Nadu, with long memories of commerce
with Southeast Asia.
The bay’s history shows
that spiritual traditions, language and migrant routes are as likely to track
the course of coastlines or rivers as they are to cling to national borders.
Migration will continue to be a source of resilience in the region, offering a
lifeline to groups that cannot rely on state protection. While much of the
movement will be internal within countries, some people affected by rising
waters will seek safety farther from home.
In doing so, they
provoke an anxiety about borders that is a legacy of the bay’s political
history.
Where local people see a
fluid frontier, state officials see firm lines on a map. The United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that since 2012, more than 13,000
people have tried to cross the Bay of Bengal in smugglers’ boats destined for
Malaysia and Thailand. Hundreds have died in the attempts; those who survive
the journey face a harsh reception. Most of the refugees are Rohingya from
coastal Myanmar, escaping a toxic mix of communal violence, political
disenfranchisement and environmental threats. They are the most recent in a
long line of people who have risked their lives to cross the bay.
The Bay of Bengal
urgently needs more effective cooperation for environmental protection — for
instance, by regulating fishing, protecting mangrove forests and curbing
persistent pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions. More coordinated and humane
policies on migration must also be developed. Hope for a new regionalism lies
in recognizing that the bay’s history, as much as its ecology, transcends
national frontiers.
Sunil S. Amrith teaches history at Birkbeck College and is the author
of “Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of
Migrants.”
*
QUICK EVACUATION EFFORTS HELP INDIA MINIMIZE DEATHS FROM CYCLONE
[As the cyclone approached, many villagers tried to stay behind to safeguard their land and livestock during the worst of the storm, according to local news reports, but almost none were unaware of the coming danger. And that is a huge change. Another crucial change has been a boom in the construction of cement houses, schools and businesses that provide crucial shelter in even the remotest areas. Villagers who stayed until the last moment had somewhere to go for safety.]
[As the cyclone approached, many villagers tried to stay behind to safeguard their land and livestock during the worst of the storm, according to local news reports, but almost none were unaware of the coming danger. And that is a huge change. Another crucial change has been a boom in the construction of cement houses, schools and businesses that provide crucial shelter in even the remotest areas. Villagers who stayed until the last moment had somewhere to go for safety.]
NEW DELHI — The powerful
cyclone that struck India’s eastern coast this weekend washed away thousands of mud
homes, knocked down power lines, blocked many of the region’s roads and damaged
crops and fishing boats. But reports from the region on Sunday showed the
success of one of the biggest and most rapid evacuations in India’s history, an
operation that moved more than 800,000 people to safety.
Just 14 years ago, a
cyclone in roughly the same place killed more than 10,000 people, and over the
past century, the storms that have roared out of the Bay of Bengal have left
much death and destruction in their wake. But while an accurate assessment of
the damage caused by this weekend’s storm will probably take weeks, the
official death toll reported Sunday evening was 17, an astonishingly low number
considering that 12 million people live in the storm’s path.
The success of the
evacuation operation was possible largely because of vast improvements in the
country’s physical infrastructure and communication systems, although the
police found it necessary, at times, to coerce reluctant villagers to leave
their mud and thatch homes, which were vulnerable to high winds and drenching
rain, local officials said.
Most of the deaths were
attributed to falling trees and collapsed houses, officials said. The cyclone,
named Phailin, was expected to drop up to 10 inches of rain over two days in
some areas. By late Sunday night, it had been downgraded from a cyclone to a
depression, with sustained winds of 25 miles per hour and gusts of 34 miles per
hour.
Change can come slowly
to India. The caste system still predominates, grinding poverty remains endemic
and clean water is rare. But the effective response to the threat this weekend
demonstrates that Indians are transforming their country, particularly in the
ways that they communicate and get their news.
Nearly a billion people
routinely use cellphones in India, up from fewer than 40 million a decade ago.
Even many of the poorest villages now have televisions, and India’s numerous
24-hour news channels have blanketed the nation’s airwaves with coverage of the
storm.
As the cyclone
approached, many villagers tried to stay behind to safeguard their land and
livestock during the worst of the storm, according to local news reports, but
almost none were unaware of the coming danger. And that is a huge change.
Another crucial change has been a boom in the construction of cement houses,
schools and businesses that provide crucial shelter in even the remotest areas.
Villagers who stayed until the last moment had somewhere to go for safety.
K. Baliah, a district
official from Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh State, said that some of the 60,000
people evacuated in the district did not leave their homes willingly. All were
allowed home on Sunday, he said.
“People are complaining
that they knew nothing would happen, but officials forced them to move anyway,”
he said with no apology.
With at least 1,000
acres of farmland submerged and many thatched homes and fishing boats
destroyed, officials said their coercion proved effective. But Mr. Baliah said
that because the cyclone was not as severe as predicted, officials would have a
harder time persuading large numbers of people to evacuate in the future.
Dr. Jibanananda Mohanty,
a retired veterinary surgeon from Bhubaneswar in the state of Odisha, said by
telephone on Sunday that he had spent a harrowing night listening to howling
winds and crashing trees outside, and that his home remained without
electricity and water. But he had days to store enough water, milk, vegetables
and other supplies to carry him through.
“Because of the advanced
warning, we were prepared for this situation,” Dr. Mohanty said. “I haven’t
heard of any loss of life in my neighborhood.”
India’s state and
central governments spent days preparing for the worst. Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh said in a statement on Saturday that he had been briefed on preparations
for the storm and had directed the central government to extend all needed
assistance to state officials.
Service members from the
country’s army, air force and navy were deployed to help with rescue and relief
operations, said A. K. Antony, India’s defense minister, and hundreds of
shelters were set up.
Visakhapatnam, in Andhra
Pradesh and near the center of the storm, experienced little damage apart from
a collapsed sea wall. By 9 a.m., the sun was shining, businesses had opened at
their usual times and traffic had resumed its usual chaos. People emerged from
their homes on Sunday with a sense of relief and, in some cases, an “I knew it
all along” attitude.
Tousis Ahmed, 30, who is
employed in India’s emerging technology industry, stayed out late on Saturday
night and even swung by the beach, which had been cordoned off, to check on the
ocean.
“The waves were calm, so
I went home and had a sound sleep,” Mr. Ahmed said.
B. Murkandarao, a fruit
vendor, said he stayed open for business on Saturday night until his usual hour
and was back on the street again on Sunday morning. “They tried to scare us on
TV, but I was never worried,” he said.
The Bay of Bengal region
is among the most vulnerable in the world to the effects of climate change, and
experts have predicted that storms are likely to become more intense. India and
Bangladesh together have more people at risk from rising sea levels than any
other place in the world. So the government’s relatively effective response to
the most recent storm is an encouraging sign.
Malavika Vyawahare and
Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Vivekananda Nemana from
Visakhapatnam, India.
