And Now for Climate!

C all it Mother Nature anointing herself for a new role in relation to the unimpeded flow of people from Bangladesh to India, especially to Assam. But let us not blame climate change, which will trigger a new stream of poverty-stricken Bangladeshis to India. The fact of life is that climate change will only be a natural addition to the political dimension of the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh to India. Mother Nature has her own ways of chastising the homo sapiens who have played with her ever since the Industrial Revolution. Hers is not a game to aid the ‘secular’ Congress, for instance, in its wondrous exercise of certifying illegal Bangladeshis as Indian ‘minority’ citizens. So let us not blame things natural. And yet, Nature herself seems to have become such a huge advantage for the pro-Bangladeshi politician in Assam who has been winning elections solely on the strength of illegal Bangladeshi votes.

To quote Ainun Nishat, senior Bangladeshi climate change advisor and one of those who have drafted the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan 2009, in the wake of Cyclone Aila in May this year that hit Bangladesh, ‘‘many from Khulna (one of that country’s coastal districts) have moved to Dhaka and India’’. The real worry is that the migration will not be restricted only to the victims of Cyclone Aila alone. It will be a sustained process, provoked and aggravated by climate change. ‘‘Another aspect of climate change would be in the form of increase in river bank erosion. This will also push people out of their original settlements. For a densely populated country like Bangladesh, any further concentration of population in safe areas will not be desirable. Thus migration, first within the country, then to areas far beyond, is not to be ruled out,’’ Nishat has told a news agency in an interview. According to Bangladesh’s national action plan to deal with climate change, the people of the coastal belt will face an adverse situation due to reduction in foodgrain production and lost livelihood opportunities, which will force them to migrate to safer places within that country as well as outside — that is, to India. Another Bangladeshi expert, Saleemul Haq, who is a senior fellow of that country’s climate change group and also chairman of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, says ‘‘Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, and in the next 20-25 years it will become a severe problem because of the increased flood frequency’’.

Where will the affected Bangladeshis go? Given Bangladesh’s inability to sustain with such a heavy burden as an already poverty-stricken people displaced due to climate change, there is no gainsaying that India will be the obvious destination. And once the crowd looking for means of livelihood enters India, Assam — the most suitable living space for illegal Bangladeshis on earth — will be its most favoured destination. And once they are in Assam, there will be no dearth of ‘secularists’ and Bangladeshi sympathizers here to welcome them and help them graduate to Indian ‘minorities’. This will also be a huge boost to the grand Islamist project to annex Assam to Bangladesh for the making of a greater Islamic state. In other words, the adversity stemming from climate change in Bangladesh will only accelerate the Bangladesh-ization of Assam, reducing the indigenous people of the State to a minority in their very homeland, while the Bangladeshis displaced from their homeland will rule the roost in their new living space. We would like to hear from the ruling ‘secular’ Congress as to its plans for the future. THE SENTINEL