Dividing landscapes that are indivisible. Creating dissections and fixity in a forest that swells and shrivels with the ebbs and flows of twice-daily tides as @AratiKumarRao shows in her visual poetry

“Development” in the region has often worked by letting the region stay underdeveloped @AnnuJal. This is violent. Sundarbans ought to be developed. But does development need to take the form of concrete & cinder block structures? Can we rethink materials & designs used?

What about the salt-resistant varieties of rice, destroyed precisely because of the construction of embankments, which led to increasing reliance on freshwater agriculture @CIFRI_ICAR @SEDINDIA on whom @arishapiro of @NPR did a story @ https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/18/478251064/salt-resistant-rice-offers-hope-for-farmers-clinging-to-disappearing-islands?t=1590316102406

As @ndmaindia begin to rebuild these lifelines/ lines, they needs to consult those that have been studying the intricate politics of embankment construction, who they benefit or not, such as Dr. Amites Mukhopadhyay at Jadavpur University.

We need to learn from creative landscape architects Dilip Da Cunha and Anuradha Mathur who argue that these are not natural disasters but disasters of bad design. Reconstruction ought to be attuned to the ecology, shifting rivers, monsoons & endemic cyclones @lindsay_bremner