Broadcasting my Thoughts !

Of Chorgallia, O. Henry and a river abused!

By- Rajshekhar Pant

Woven round a small village with the name Lakeland -"situated on a low spur of Cumberland range of mountains on a little tributary of the Clinch river" 'there is a rather lesser talked about story of O Henry 'The Church With An Overshot Wheel'. It is the story of a "contended village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrow-gauge railroad line" which, having lost itself in the neighbouring woods "ran into Lakelands from fright and loneliness."

O Henry never visited Chorgalia- a small village on the foot of rather less prominent Shivaliks in the Kumaon Himalayas, close to the foothill city of Haldwani 'and yet all that he wrote for Lakelands is equally true to Chorgalia. "There are no lakes, and you wonder again why it was named Lakelands"and Chorgalia also never had the reputation of being the 'corridor of thieves'. A somnolent settlement on a submontane road, right at the mouth of a pass where the river Nandhor debouches from hills on to the open country of 'Bhabar', it in the early British days happened to be the only irrigated pocket in the entire eastern Bhabar region that now constitutes the grain bowel of the state of Uttarakhand. Waters of Nandhor splashing the verdant Shivaliks on one side have been brought to the gradually widening expanse of green fields on the other through numerous channels still constituting the lifeline of Chorgalia and scores of other settlements that have cropped round it over he decades. The rich flora and fauna it harboured round its banks, the alluvial soil it would invariably bring in rains and off-load at the paddy-fields, the rich piscine-stock it once had and the sustenance it gave to those who chose to settle, live and die along its course 'had earned for it a motherly respect and affection. Janki Devi a septuagenarian still remembers the halcyon days, when ritual worship was offered to 'Jhupua' the local river-god to protect the village from the wrath of flash-floods that at times would sweep the new cultivation along the banks of the river.

No one worships 'Jhupua' now. Nandhor 'the bestower as it is, has now earned the reputation of being a harbinger of direct prosperity and that too in terms of cash, -thanks to the efforts put-up by the Government departments and a handful of high-ups in Chorgalia. The fear of floods is best exploited here to bring a windfall of annual govt grants for building boulder spurs, retentions, bank pitching, revetments and a host of other flood control measures which are often swept away in the first flush of monsoon. The river is abused right left and in the centre for the whole year to be used for petty personal gains.

In the past ten years around Rs 250 millions have reportedly been spent by departments like Watershed Management, Forest and Irrigation in the name of flood control in a stretch of a few Km downstream from the point called Machali-Bandh at Chorgaluia. At Machali Bandh, located parallel to the Chorgalia market towards the Shivalik range at a distance of around half a km from Sitarganj highway, which bisects the settlement, the bed of the river widens suddenly and starts bifurcating itself into two distributaries by the name Kailash and Devaha. Flowing close to the easterly flanks of the Shivalik for a couple of Km Devaha finally feeds the Nanaksagar Dam while Kailash eventually joins Ramganga near Shajahanpur. For the past few decades much of the water of Nandhor has been flowing towards Kailash side, offloading the gravel and sand towards the Devaha. Old-timers of Chorgalia say that it is the normal course as the river has a history of shifting in its bed (which widens gradually as it flows downstream) towards one side or the other in an interval of ten to twelve years. The bed of Nandhor -falling within the precincts of reserve forest -has been encroached upon by the new settlers in connivance with the corrupt govt officials and politicians. "Upholding the cause of these encroachers" says Dr GC Sharma an archaeologist and painter of repute from Chorgalia, "the govt officials make huge proposals every year and the politicians ensure that they are cleared well in time." It is interesting to note that over Rs three crores have reportedly been spent in pre-monsoon season in previous years in erecting boulder-spurs, wire craters and retentions etc in and around Machli-Bandh area alone. For the said taming of Nandhor river at the same spot and a few villages downstream in Chorgalia region itself, (like Kutaliya, Pachonia, Sunardhara, Aamkheda etc) projects worth over Rs Seven Crores are reported to have been sent to the govt for sanctioning. "To the recurring benefits of a handful of contractors in league with politicians the government keeps on spending large sums of public-funds leaving the banks further expanded and barren enough for the lobby of the same contractors and their mentors to exploit the situation the next year," says Ramesh Sharma, the ex Grampradhan of the village Nayakatan in Chorgalia. Requesting anonymity a few villagers inform that for the construction of retentions- which as per the specifications were to be solid RCC blocks interlinked with iron bars 'boulders lying at the bank were plastered with the mortar prepared in locally available sand, the use of which is strictly prohibited in all construction purposes because of its extremely poor quality. "The wire craters" add the villagers further "were placed at a 90 degree angle against the current despite the objection raised by us." A few pictures provided by these villagers testify their allegations. It will not be out of place to mention here that at Machali-Bandh where Nandhors is most turbulent during the monsoons, there is the feeder of the Chorgalia canal-system. Cut too much into the hill-side and entailing a good deal of arching, this system running for about 10 miles, once used to irrigate over three thousand acres of land on the west bank of the river. Boulders-spurs, wire-craters and retentions constructed every year using supposedly the state of the art engineering skill of contemporary times are swept away in the monsoon that follows but this canal system constructed in the year 1887-1889 at the cost of Rs 20,000 is still lying intact. Even in the subterranean part of the canal not even a single masonry stone is yet loosened or displaced or a chip of the plaster peeled. The lowering of the river bed from the mouth of the feeder has rendered at least the upper part of the canal absolutely dysfunctional. Incidentally, the fear of the floods has also been exploited to open the bed of the river "ever on rise" allegedly, for the mining of sand and gravel.Though much of the bed of the Nandhor River falls in the reserve forest and constitutes an integral part of an officially declared elephant corridor yet, two lac cubic meter of sand and gravel was mined for a period of about two months last year. Under the pretext of floods the referred mining was done around two to three km downstream from Machli-Bandh. "Only the forest officials and planners knew it better that how this reckless mining is going to alleviate the fear of floods at Chorgalia," says Kunwar Singh Mehra, an activist and representative of a neighbouring village namely Ummedpur. Dr GC Sharma brings yet another interesting fact to the notice. A leisurely walk for a few km along the course of the river Kailash, as Nandhor is called a few Km downstream from Chorgalia, reveals that in its rapidly widening bed the river disappears quite often to reappear after a few kms. "The eye-catching greenery of this region owes much to the capillary action which causes the water to disappear in intervals and spreads it allover in the neighbouring region. Mining the riverbed for sand and gravel is bound to sound the death knell of this entire ecosystem," he says. The effects of unscientific mining may well be adjudged from the fact that the width of river Gaula flowing a few km to the south-west of Nandhor, happened to be around 50 feet between Haldwani and Lalkuan till 1963-64. It has now gone up to 2.5 km and hardly any greenery is to be seen in the barren landscape that follows it for miles together. More than the water it brings to the perennially thirsty foothill city ofHaldwani, the river Gaula today is known for the gravel and the coarse sandy deposits it offloads during the flash-floods in monsoons. Officials proudly declare that the river did yield a revenue of Rs 56 crores in the year 2005-06.

Villagers and the 'pradhans' of all the four Gramsabhas of Chorgalia (i.e. Khanwalkatan, Nayagaonkatan, Lakhanmandi and Chorgalia Aamkheda) representing a total population of around 10 to 12 thousands have for long been suggesting that clearing the bed of Devaha for a couple of Km with the help of JCV Machine along the Shivalik range and piling the sand and gravel along its shoreline will eradicate the threat of flash-floods even from the vulnerable settlements mushrooming on the forest-land a few km downstream. The government departments however, have turned a deaf year to all such suggestions having their roots in the traditional wisdom of taming the river.

A brief stay at Chorgalia brings to once notice several examples of squandering and the alleged sharing of taxpayer's money by those in or close to the power-corridor. The 'Sal' forest along the bed of the river has been encircled by a wall barely 1.10 m high. Forest office at Chorgalia could give no plausible justification for erecting from the lucrative grants of World Bank such a wall running for miles together. 'Sal' grows in foothill forests naturally and is never planted, it is not at all a fodder and a 1.10 m high dry- masonry wall can hardly ward off any wild animal if there is at all a need to do so. The old forest route known as submontane-road running across the forested region along the foothill has been abandoned for the reasons better known to the planners and a new road has been carved in previous decades connecting Chorgalia with Sitarganj. Villagers feel that funds squandered in aligning a new road should better have been utilized in completing the Majhola-Maurnaula or Durgapeepal road on the other side of the river. The fate of these half completed roads is hanging in balance for decades together. To exhaust the surplus in the concerned departments aqueducts crisscrossing the farmlands all over Chorgalia are replaced quite frequently with new constructions after every three and four years. In fact such examples are numerous.

These unwelcome developments over the years indeed have been instrumental in bringing about a noticeable attitudinal change in the young generation as far their relationship with their surroundings are concerned. Elders in Chorgalia still have a sense of belonging to the land they have been tilling over the generations. The huge boulders, trees of Sheesum, Sal or Acacia, the old forest trails and the meter-gauge railway line lying in disuse for several years, the over a century old forest chowki, the old banyan and peepul tree close to the ancient primary school and several other things are all the integral parts of their lives. They are the images these old-timers would never like to part with. The younger generation however, speaks of all these things 'may it be a piece of cultivated land, a tree, the river or the work proposed to be carried out in pre-monsoon season by govt departments 'in terms of money and money alone.

In the story of O Henry, Aglaia, the daughter of Father Abram, the protagonist in the story, having a chance sojourning at Lakelands, the place from where she was stolen by wandering Gypsies "when a flaxen haired toddler" rediscovers both her identity and her father. Having done so she asks Ralph, her lover, "to wait" as "it would be just she and her father for awhile". Will the people of Chorgalia, following a rediscovery of their identity, will ever be able to say "to wait" to their new love?

(written under the aegis of CSE Media Fellowship)

Badri Bhavan, Saket

Bhimtal, Distt Nainital

Pin-263 136 (Uttarakhand)