The chars
Levi Vanderaerden // Chandrani Sinha// Amin Nozumul // 2022 // 25 min
In the Indian province of Assam, a nomadic people live on floating villages in one of the largest rivers in the country. Their houses are built on sandbanks - the chars - which are slowly but surely crumbling due to climate change. Large refugee camps are being built on the banks, families are in danger of losing everything and their daughters are forced to marry off to wealthy Indians on the mainland. The people on the chars have been treated as inferior by the Hindu majority for generations. When the river swallows their villages, entire families are deleted from the population register for no reason.
Redhorse Reporters Levi Vanderaerden, Chandrani Sinha and Amin Nozmul research the identity of the Char residents. They investigate the impact of global warming and the social and economic problems this entails.
Realised with the support of Fonds Pascal Decroos voor bijzondere journalistiek, Equator and the Belgian Development Cooperation.
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"I don't like living here, it floods every year. People are losing their homes and their livestock. Lots of people are dying. And because of the erosion, we have to move to a different sandbank every year.””
/// ASRAFUL (12) /// Boy living on the chars ///
