Delta Residents Desperate as India Builds Barbed Fences. By Douglas McDougall, London Observer, March 30, 2008. "Dependra Das stretches out his arms to show his flaky skin, covered in raw saltwater sores. His fingers submerged in soft black clay for up to six hours a day, he spends his time frantically shoring up a crude sea dyke surrounding his remote island home in the Sundarbans, the world's largest delta. Alongside him, across the beach in long lines, the villagers of Ghoramara island... do the same, trying to hold back the tide. For the islanders, each day begins and ends the same way. As dusk descends, the people file back to their thatched huts. By morning the dyke will be breached and work will begin again. Here in the vast, low-lying Sundarbans [which lie one-third in India and two-thirds in Bangladesh], the largest mangrove wilderness on the planet, Das, 70, is preparing to lose his third home to the sea in as many years... Over the past few years, in a construction project that will eventually reach across 2,050 miles, India has been quietly sealing itself off from Bangladesh, its much poorer neighbour. Fence sections totalling about 1,550 miles have been built since 2004, many traversing the fringes of the Sundarbans. Today the frontier between the countries is defined by two rows of 10-ft. barbed-wire barriers. In New Delhi the belief is that the fence is being built to 'keep in' an anticipated flood of refugees from Bangladesh."
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