The construction of bridges and roads is supposed to help connect the northeast, but it may leave local communities doubly marginalised.
Kherepe Meme gestures with her hand animatedly. She vividly remembers and describes the great Assam earthquake of 1950. The epicentre of this 8.6 magnitude earthquake was in eastern Tibet along the Sino-Indian border, a few hundred kilometres from Kebali, Meme’s home for about 80 years, the whole of her life.
Kebali is one of the many remote villages located near Roing, the main city of the Lower Dibang Valley district in eastern Arunachal Pradesh, about 2,500 kilometres from New Delhi, and the furthest of India’s north-eastern states.
Kherepe Meme was a young girl at the time of the earthquake, but still recalls how the earth shook violently, as if it was the end of the world.
The disaster devastated landscapes and villages in the eastern Himalayas killing about 5,000 people, leading to flash floods in the Subansiri, Siang, Dibang and Lohit rivers of Arunachal Pradesh, and rise of the riverbed of the Brahmaputra in the plains of Upper Assam.
Meme lives very close to a river, known in her Idu language as Ephe, a tributary of the Dibang. During the peak monsoon season, the sounds of the river remind her of what she heard during the earthquake.
The Idus, along with the Miju and the Digaru communities, comprise the larger Mishmi tribe. They have a symbiotic relationship with the various tributaries of the Dibang and the Lohit rivers, which meander and tumble down from the Mishmi Hills. The rivers are often described by locals as mad, thunderous and impassable during the rainy season.
For many old women like Kherepe Meme, crossing rivers during the monsoon, even in their youth, required tremendous strength and courage, sometimes using suspended bamboo bridges built by locals.
In other times, they simply stay away from the ferocious river, letting it have its peace of mind. Kherepe Meme has never ventured out beyond Roing. She cannot comprehend the new bridge built over the Lohit river about 70 kilometres from her home, now connecting Arunachal Pradesh and its neighbouring state, Assam.
A geopolitical connection
On May 26, 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s longest river bridge, named after the legendary Assamese singer Bhupen Hazarika and connecting just over 9 km between Dhola and Sadiya towns in Assam.