Chapter 2 - Stages of land reclamation and their impact on the fluvio-geomorphological environment of Indian Sundarbans with special reference to Matla–Bidyadhari Interfluve

Abstract

Abstract Land reclamation is the process of legal acquiring of land area and forested area either by clearing or by converting an unproductive waste or fallow or unauthorized land for any economic or societal development purposes by any organization or any governing body. This is very common anthropogenic process for planning and developmental projects often carried out with intense survey and field works. The East India Company since 1770s also attempted and carried out this land reclamation project in different phases in the Sundarbans, the largest Mangrove Delta of the world. The first and foremost attempt was to clear the vast extent of unused natural mangrove island to convert those marshy, swampy, and densely forested parts into agricultural lands or Lots so that the East India Company can generate revenue to enrich their treasury through the Lotdars of the reclaimed Lots, the leased parts reclaimed. Another important aim was to make those uninhabited and unproductive or Anabadi mangrove islands into arable or Abad land so that the refugee and prisoners could be migrated to those land areas to set up new settlement cum economic areas. In this way, the Company might collect more revenue as well as can produce more food. Although several Acts were placed and huge amount of land area were reclaimed and embankments were erected along the major tidal channels with construction of lots of sluices and khals from time to time, some of them gave a good return but the typical deltaic fluvio-geomorphological environment and disrupted hydromorphological environment did not meet the demands as excepted by the then government of undivided Bengal. Rather natural calamities and the drainage systems collapsed and became a matter of woe and agony in today's Sundarbans particularly in both mature and active estuarine parts of Matla–Bidyadhari Interfluves and other interfluves in the India Sundarbans. This chapter dealt with the stages of land reclamation processes before and after the independence of India and highlighted on their impact on the fluvio-geomorphological environment of the interfluvial parts of present Sundarbans.