Restoring the country\\\'s lifelines

Well-known American actor Zach Gilford was a realist to say, "The surface of the Earth is 30 per cent land and 70 per cent water. A new born baby is composed of 70 per cent water and 30 per cent everything else. I guess this means that life and water are inseparable." He was only describing what water means to human life. His remark amply illustrates the situation in countries like Bangladesh where rivers and people have co-existed since time immemorial.
Countless rivers and rivulets in Bangladesh once were favourite themes that well-known poets including Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam had focused liberally. Innumerable poems and prose were inspired by rivers and their waters that shine on moon-lit nights. Songs have commemorated rivers. Sadly, all these are now slowly but surely going to be extinct.
The Buriganga on whose banks romantic couples spend their afternoons and evenings is now in the throes of slow death due to poisoning of its water. So are other rivers surrounding the capital city of Bangladesh.
Even the Gumti river under the expansive Daudkandi bridge is dying with shoals coming up choking the once mighty river. Then the turbulent Sitalakhya near Narayanganj is fast squeezing. On a boat journey to the ancestral home of then West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu at Barodi in 1996, filmmaker Gautam Ghose and Suman Chattapadhyaya, executive editor of the Anandabazar Patrika, were exclaiming in excitement when they saw the gentle and beautiful ripples in the river, "This is not to be seen in West Bengal". Their journey preceded Jyoti Basu's arrival there by a helicopter. The beauty of Bangladesh's rivers simply enchanted them.
Rivers nowadays are a shadow of their original expanses. The country has even failed to record the exact number of big and small rivers. According to the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), the number is 259 while a publication of Bangladesh River Institute puts it at 312. According to the 2010 chart of Bangladesh Centre for Environment and Geographic Information System, there are 405 rivers in the country. The BWDB estimate puts it at 310 rivers in Bangladesh. Out of these, 57 are border rivers. The condition of 175 is miserable, and 65 are almost dead.
Eighty per cent of Bangladesh's rivers now lack proper depth. The latest study of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) reveals that 117 rivers are either dead or have lost navigability. Such rivers/canals include the Brahmaputra, the Padma, the Mahananda, the Gorai, the Meghna, the Titas, the Gumti, the Kushiara, the Dhaleswari, the Bhairab, the Sitalakkhya, and the Turag.
It is not very difficult to find out the number of rivers crisscrossing Bangladesh. Different union councils and upazila councils could easily provide such information, if asked for. But who will ask?
Well-known experts say, indiscriminate and ill-planned human interventions have been strangling the rivers, lifelines of many a town and village. Agriculture, transportation, trade and commerce, socio-economic development, environment and lifestyle of the localities are also changing accordingly.
Excessive silt deposits are cutting the water-bearing capacity of the rivers, which is why they now burst the banks more frequently and with less water flow than they did previously, notes an expert. He suggests that the government took measures to maintain navigability of rivers and stop encroachment on riverbeds.
In many rivers, now lifeless without water, farmers cultivate crops in the riverbeds during the lean season. They also breed fish in the stagnating river areas. Most of them once were connected with the three major river systems of the Ganges, the Jamuna and the Brahmaputra. But the water flow in the systems from upstream India started to dwindle decades ago, drying and sealing up their connecting points with the rivers.
Continued silt deposit, erosion of crop-field soil and massive encroachment as well as lack of dredging are some other major afflictions pushing these rivers into extinction.
Mainly the tributaries and distributaries of these rivers are dying. Some of them die because their estuaries have been blocked and some others due to changes in their courses.
The rivers from Noakhali, Sylhet and Dinajpur are not affected by the Farakka barrage. These rivers dried up mainly because of lack of care, says Dr Ainun Nishat, the country's leading river expert.
"Rivers should be managed properly as our country is flood-prone and a lot of siltation and soil erosion occurs every year," Dr. Nishat says. "Just 50 years ago, farmers used to cultivate only two crops, Aman and winter vegetables. But now they are growing Boro, which causes more soil erosion and the eroded soil is ultimately discharged into the canals and rivers leading to filling up of river beds," he explains.
A decision to form the National River Protection Commission is yet to be implemented. The task of keeping rivers navigable round the year is so huge that it cannot be accomplished on an ad-hoc basis. Even a separate ministry for the upkeep of hundreds of rivers is urgently needed in view of their great importance to the national economy.      
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