The Beki river is as ‘bent’ as its name conveys. Snaking down from the hills of Bhutan to the north of Assam in India, it has been the source of both joy and sorrow for the people of Kalgachia town in Barpeta district by changing course and ‘bending’ more almost every monsoon season.
The river has left its most contrasting imprint on a 500-metre stretch of the 18-km road connecting Kalgachia with Barpeta town. Here, a lush green paddy field is juxtaposed with a few houses hanging precariously over an expanding bend of the river that has devoured more than half the asphalt road, forcing a gravelled realignment.
The people living here, mostly Bengali-origin Muslims, pejoratively referred to as ‘Miya’, have over the decades learnt to adjust their lives to the Beki’s moods, at times dictated by the India-built 60MW Kurichhu hydropower project in Bhutan upstream. But even the toughest of seasons did not prepare them for a constituency-eroding ‘political river’ undammed by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
