Life on edge: Rising Sutlej poses a threat to villagers

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Janian/Gatta Mundi Kasu (Lohian) Jalandhar, August 18

At Gatta Mundi Kasu village, a high bundh along the Sutlej also acts as the highest place in the village where peasants (Rai Sikhs) live with their children and animals. At Janian and Janian Chahal, as one visits the several feet high bundh, residents show their inundated fields — paddy, vegetables, fodder — all submerged in water.

A strip of green showing through the sparkling waters far into the horizon is the banks of the Sutlej in dry season, which is now reduced to a thin line peeking out.

The Tribune team caught residents of Janian, Janian Chahal and Gatta Mundi Kasu (in Lohian) steeped in absolute uncertainty ever since the administration told them that their villages were about to be flooded with 2 lakh cusecs of water, at 12 noon today.

“Saddi zameen, ghar chad ke kitthe jaiye. Hun pani aaya tan etthe hi marange,” (where should we go after leaving our land and house, If water comes, we will die here), says Salwinder Singh, a resident of Janian, as he joins other villagers in assessing the damages to their fields.

Jagir Singh a resident of Gatta Mundi Kasu, enquires from visitors: “Do you have any arrangement to take away our children from here? Where will they walk to? They are small.  We don’t worry about us or the cattle. But at least shift our children to a safer place.”

Munni Devi, who is into contract farming and growing ‘parmal’ (pointed gourd) at Janian village, says: “All my crop this year is under water. I have children to feed. We have had losses worth Rs 7 to Rs 8 lakh. We were suddenly asked to leave.”

She manages a tempo which moves out her belongings to Janian village from her shanty by the river side where she was previously staying. While she is moving to the village she has no plan B on where to move if the village also got flooded during night, as per the warning issued.

While the four ‘saroops’ of Guru Granth Sahib are among the first belongings of Janian Chahal village to be moved (from a gurdwara in a low-lying area to another gurdwara) in Janian Chahal. Elsewhere, homes are lined with sacks, cots, trucks, buckets and little cloth bundles hurriedly stuffed with belongings – for now to be moved to the roof.

Majority of the villagers, including an elderly couple at the village living with their daughter-in-law, have no clue how they will manage if the water comes in. They have even tried to move their belongings.

Harnek Singh, sarpanch of Janian Chahal, says: “What can we do. The bundhs are lower than a decade ago. This entire area is also stuck between the Chitti Bein and the Sutlej. If the water does come in, it will find no outlet. It will make matters worse. People aren’t even thinking of moving animals. But think about children and the losses to crops. Farmers are already indebted.”

When this correspondent visited the villages, they said only the local SHO and the local SDM had visited the place and they informed them that over 2 lakh cusecs of water would reach the place by evening. Villagers claimed they were informed at 12 noon.