Somnath Mukherji

Every time I go to the Sunderbans, it feels like a lifetime spent there. Perhaps it is because of its geographical and psychological remoteness. It feels like going between two worlds. A world that runs on a different logic, where people perceive things differently. Hunger, satiety, resilience, nature, sense of security - all play their roles a little differently in the Sunderbans.

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Background: From October to December 2010 there was an epidemic of falciparum malaria in Chhattisgarh. The government reported a statewide total of 32 deaths in 2010. In Bilaspur, the count was 9 of which 7 were reported from the JSS hospital in Ganiyari.

The Community Health team of JSS gathered evidence of 250 deaths in the Kota block of Bilaspur district. These are areas where JSS is not on community health. Through a painful process of verbal autopsy, the team confirmed that 200 deaths were caused due to malaria – in one block of one district alone. One can only estimate the number of deaths statewide.

What follows are some firsthand accounts given by family members, to the JSS team, where at least 1 person had died.

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Interview on WESU, Wesleyan University, Middletown on 3rd Jan, 2011.

On the conviction of Dr. Binayak Sen

Workers wait for 6 months for NREGS wages in Aila Affected Areas in the Sunderbans even amidst existence of widespread hunger.

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Published in the Frontier Weekly Vol. 42 No. 48, Jun 13-19, 2010

“My family of seven needs 3 kilograms of rice everyday, but I can manage only 2 kgs,” says Fazlu Khan, squatting beside his bow-legged nine-month-old daughter with a distended stomach. Fazlu is one of the 17 families whose homestead was washed away by Aila. Now they live on someone else’s land under a tarpaulin roof ready to leak in the next rain.

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Published in Telegraph, 25th March, 2010

Chaash nei, chaal baish taka Kg, bhiksha amil (No agriculture, rice costs Rs 22 a kilo, no alms for the beggar)

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Published in Sangbadmanthan, 1st March, 2010

The much anticipated Operation Green Hunt has started in fits and starts. It is a high stake hunt. The government is waiting to re-assert its authority in the forested reaches of Central India. The corporations are waiting for unhindered access to the wealth underneath the land. The Maoists are [perhaps] waiting for the atrocities to begin so that the discontent takes deeper roots into the hearts and minds of the adivasis. And the adivasis…what are they waiting for? We do not know. We do not know because we never asked them.

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Published in Mainstream Weekly on Nov 14th, 2009

“My family of seven needs 3 kg of rice every day, but I can manage only 2 kg,” says Fazlu Khan squatting behind his bow-legged 9-month-old daughter with a distended stomach. Fazlu is one of 17 families whose homestead was washed away by Cyclone Aila in May 2009. Now they live on someone else’s land under a tarpaulin roof ready to leak at the next rain. 

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Published in Infochangeindia.com on 26th Feb, 2010

Adivasis in southern Chhattisgarh are caught between the violence of the Maoists and the state. The state has suppressed and criminalized dissent, shrinking the democratic space, and narrowed any possibility of a political solution to the violence ravaging the region, write Somnath Mukerji, Umang Kumar and Garga Chatterjee.

(Above): Bhima Mandavi along with his mother stand before the burnt remains of their home in the Chhatisgarh village of Badepalli. [JAVED IQBAL photo]

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Published in The Siliconeer on July 14th, 2009

Sliced out of history
Like raw flesh under a dark hide
Rosy, irrigated by tiny droplets of blood
Taut barbed wires stretched around
On cold foggy mornings dew drops hang forlorn
Rows of sheds like factories
Numbered like kennels
Ominous smoke rises obscuring the sun
 
Today, I remember in hushed voices
The raw flesh of humanity, flushed with blood
Pink, it could go deeper, I think
 
I wake up in the middle of night
With claws long and aquiline
I run, my dream chases me like a stray mongrel
Through the dark alleys, breathless
Stepping over small motionless bodies
A deafening silence
My dream behind, I run
 
I hear cheers from rooftops over the alleys
Splintering the air. Silence
And then all is gone
 
I look for my chasing dream
I see the glint of barbed wire at the end of the alley
A little girl blocks my way
What you have behind your back?
A knife she says, carved out of my father’s bone