Generations of Golak Das’s family have lived in Keotpara, a village near Deepor Beel, a permanent freshwater wetland occupying just over 4 sq km on the fringe of Guwahati city in Assam.

Das belongs to one of the 850 fishing families whose lives are intertwined with the fate of the wetland, increasingly under siege from urbanisation and pollution, and representing the steady.

“Perhaps our community is as old as the beel (wetland) itself,” Das said.

Das is the secretary of Deepor Beel Paaspara Samabay Samiti Limited, a cooperative society that fights for the rights of the fishermen who live close to the wetland.

It is hard for Das to imagine a different occupation—fishing is what he grew up learning from his father. “I used to accompany him to the beel when I was a young boy,” Das said. “We would drink this water and catch a variety of fish.”

The fishing community near Deepor Beel belongs to the marginalised Kaibarta community, recognised as a scheduled caste in Assam, depending heavily on fishing for their livelihood, besides allied activities such as weaving or repairing fishing nets, constructing boats and selling fish. “It is our only way of survival,” Das said.

India has lost nearly one third of natural wetlands to urbanisation and pollution over the past four decades.

In 2018, the first-ever Global Wetland Outlook published by the Ramsar Convention estimated that global wetlands were reducing three times faster than forests.

Wetlands are threatened by reclamation and degradation through drainage and landfill, pollution (discharge of domestic and industrial effluents, disposal of solid wastes), over-exploitation of natural resources resulting in loss of biodiversity and disruption in ecosystem services provided by wetlands.

A Legacy Of Protection

Members of Deepor Beel’s fishing community told Article 14 that their ancestors had settled in the vicinity of the wetland at least four to five generations earlier, protecting it for decades.





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