Page 90 - Changing Living Spaces

Haruhisa Asada

embankments totalling 4,000 km had been completed (Kar 2014, 16). In
Nagaon district, it was difficult to live in the floodplains near the main
stream of the Brahmaputra, where water entered during the rainy season,
but around 1960 an embankment was built along the main stream, mak-
ing it easier to control the river water. It is likely that Muslim immigrants
settled in the floodplains where few people previously lived.

Livelihood Activities of Muslim Immigrants
The field survey was conducted in Chitalmari village (hereinafter vil-
lage C), one of the villages dominated by Muslim immigrants in the
Brahmaputra floodplain. In village C, the hydrological environment out-
side and inside the embankment is very different, and the livelihood ac-
tivities of the villagers also differ accordingly.
The area outside the embankment is completely inundated by the
flooding of the main stream during the rainy season (June-September).
The water depth reaches up to 2-3 m in some places, making agricultur-
al activities impossible. During this time, some villagers catch wild fish
with nets, but this is not an efficient method and not very profitable.
When the rainy season ends and the water level drops, vegetable culti-
vation such as chili and mustard begins in October, followed by boro rice
cultivation in December. Since river water drains completely during the
dry season, groundwater is pumped up from tube wells to irrigate the cul-
tivated areas.
The agricultural landscape inside the embankment is completely dif-
ferent. As long as the embankment does not collapse, no river water can
flow into this area. However, during the rainy season, most of the land is
flooded, except for the roads and the homesteads that were created in the
uplands of the village due to the rise in groundwater level and rainfall. It
is impossible to plant rice inside the embankment during the rainy sea-
son. Since the hydrological environment can be controlled to some extent
even during the rainy season, jute is grown in the higher areas instead,
and other cultivated areas are used as ponds for fish farming. In the dry
season, boro rice is grown on all cultivated land.
In the village studied, a cropping pattern combining boro rice during
the dry season and fish farming during the rainy season is common. Fish
farming begins in April. The purchased fish fry are thrown into a pond
on homestead land and raised until they reach a certain size. After that,
when the water accumulates in the cultivated areas, the fish are released
there. The farmed fish species are common carp (Cyprinus carpo), silver

88