Dec. 24: The mighty Barak has pushed about 300-odd people living on a stretch of embankment built by the water resources department to the edge of despair.

Hailing from Palarpur-Baghmara village, a once-prosperous habitat near the industrial town of Panchgram in Hailakandi district, these people are not only exposed to monsoon flooding but also erosion throughout the year. The Barak, which is the second largest river in the Northeast after the Brahmaputra, has been eating into the banks on the right side for several years.

According to the water resources division’s south Assam regional office in Silchar, residents of the riverbank village with a population of around 1,500 first experienced the spurt of erosion in 1986.

The situation took an alarming turn in 2003, when more land started to sink under the Barak waters, leaving hundreds of villagers homeless. Apart from houses and farmlands, at least two primary schools and a Kali temple ceased to exist As the river turned turbulent and ravaged its banks, flanked by a seven-foot-high embankment erected to save the area from occasional floods.

Nobody imagined that along with the floods, the villagers would also be victims of the regular erosion and be reduced to penury.

With no other option left for them, 50-odd families have raised bamboo shanties along the embankments. Only plastic sheets spread over these houses protect the inhabitants from rain and sun.

Deprived of their only source of living — farming — the “embankment people” now fend for themselves by doing odd jobs in the houses and fields owned by affluent people of the village.

“Our daily routine is to be up early and after a meal of rice and lentil we leave for Panchgram township to look for odd jobs,” said Mintu Singh, 40, a father of three sons.

They get lucky sometimes and are hired by some contractors’ agents as labourers in the industrial town or in the nearby areas.

Even the government’s much touted food-for-work programme has eluded them.

Whenever the victims approach the leaders and officials of their areas, promises are made in plenty to rehabilitate or relocate them on government land or to find them regular sources of livelihood. It is no secret that none of these promises are kept.

The water resources department has drawn up a Rs 199 crore scheme for the control of erosion by the Barak along both its banks, but many of these schemes have yet to materialise.