Youth for Meghna (Y4M)

Prologue: Bending with Barak

The Barak River begins in the hills of Manipur. It curves south, turns sharply north, and then bends west, as if retracing its own memory – before spilling into the plains of Assam and slipping into Bangladesh, where it parts into the Surma and Kushiyara, only to merge again as the Meghna.

Its fluvial geomorphology is what gives the region both its fertility and its floods. As the river meanders, it leaves behind oxbow (Anua) like Rupaibali Anua, cradles of biodiversity and memory.

This serpentine tarjectories is unique to Barak sustaining an ecological sanctuary — home to the endangered Gangetic dolphin, Siamese crocodile, otters, and over 2,000 species of fish. Yet the Barak is more than hydrology.

To live along the Barak is to live with a river that both sustains and transforms — a river that demands reverence, resilience, and restraint. The Barak bends, and in bending, it teaches us how to live with a river that feeds, forgets, and swells.

May 2025 | Cachar District, Assam | © Brinda Kashyap

Following the Flow: Along the Barak

From above, the Barak River carves a slow, deliberate path—its looping bends shaping a basin where water lingers and land remembers. The aerial view captures more than geography; it offers a glimpse into a landscape defined by motion and memory.

On the ground, we follow that memory. Along the overgrown banks of Rupaibali Anua, youth researchers and local partners walk the perimeter of a lake once fringed with rice fields, now witness to agricultural runoff, stagnation, and the creeping spread of hyacinth.

This is where inquiry begins: between the sky’s wide view and the narrow trail beside the lake, where every step traces a larger story of land, water, and people.

May 2025 | Cachar District, Assam | © Anushri Tiwari & Joel Kyndiah

Rhythms of a Living landscape

Even in the lean months following the monsoon rains, the Barak basin provides. Along the rich floodplains, community members cultivate vegetables, pumpkin, gourd, leafy greens, drawing moisture from the soil, that nourish both body and economy.

This landscape reflects the parts of the river that are of importance to the communities: food security, small holder livelihoods, and agro-ecological resilience.

Here, ecosystem services are not abstract policy jargon, but daily and seasonal rhythms. The river gives, community know, and the fields respond. Not with drama, but with coexistence.

March 2025 | Cachar District, Assam | © Anushri Tiwari

The Lake That Holds It All

A woman casts her net. Another washes clothes. A third steps waist-deep into the shallows. On the far edge, a pontoon pump hums silently, drawing water from this same lake to feed pipes and filters under the Jal Jeevan Mission.

This lake doesn’t belong to one purpose—it belongs to many. It provides water to drink, fish to catch, space to cleanse, and soil to grow from. But with every use, it also absorbs pressure: from household waste, chemical runoff, and invasive hyacinths.

The community depends on this lake for everything. And the lake, in turn, depends on how gently it’s held.

March 2025 | Rupaibali Anua, Cachar District, Assam | © Anushri Tiwari

Threading Citizen Science & Memories

In one frame, a boy rows through floating lily pads and hyacinth, his boat light, his gaze forward, his movement steady. In another, an older villager steadies a bamboo raft to help collect water samples for quality testing, part of a Y4M-led study with Assam University.

Together, these moments capture generations navigating a shared future – through traditional ecological knowledge, inquiry, muscle and scientific methods. The lake, once abundant, now shows signs of strain: overgrowth, runoff, imbalance. But it is not forgotten.

In the quiet gesture of a paddle, and the careful lift of a water bottle, a community reads its water, striving to understand it better, and work together to improve it.

March & May 2025 | Rupaibali Anua, Cachar District, Assam | © Anushri Tiwari & Brinda Kashyap

From Sample to Piped Supply

Three re-used plastic bottles rest on a wooden canoe, where water samples are collected by Y4M members, with research and lab assistance from Assam University, Silchar. The lake’s collected color, smell, and sediment would report quiet stories of use and misuse – runoff, and hyacinths. A fisherman looks on, knowing this water too well.

Nearby, a Jal Jeevan Mission plant draws from the same lake, promising piped water to households across Singerband. Communities report turbidity, odor, and skin irritation. Field tests confirm phosphate levels slightly above bathing thresholds, as signs of eutrophication.

Through this citizen-led science, data becomes dialogue. Bottles become questions. And youth become the bridge between policy and perception.

May 2025 | Singerband Village, Cachar District, Assam | © Joel Kyndiah & Brinda Kashyap

Where Water Speaks Through Women

In the soft afternoon light, in the room painted soft pink of a family home, women gather cross-legged on the polished floor, with a large community hand-drawn map between them. The women sit in a circle of knowledge, firm, attentive, and clear. They speak of water access, household challenges, and the degradation and fragmentation of older systems.

Facilitated by Y4M women, this session is gentle yet resolute. The floral corners, quiet listening, and children peeking through open doors do not make it any less public. This is water governance in motion—reframed through lived experience and collective memory.

Men remain at the margins of this frame. Not excluded, but witnessing a necessary shift.

March & May 2025 | Rupaibali Anua, Cachar District, Assam | © Joel Kyndiah

“Is Our Water Safe ?”

In a half-built brick room with open windows and a tin roof, a projector glows with a quiet urgency is a question critical to each of us in the room – “Is your water safe? Around it, community members lean in—listening, questioning, and sharing.

Here, science becomes shared—translated into the rhythm of daily life. Y4M members walk through parameters like pH, turbidity, and nitrates, grounding each technical concept in local stories of concern and lived experience.

Through this citizen science workshop, the community becomes more than a subject of study—they become the custodian of their own knowledge, their water, and future.

May 2025 | Singberband Village, Cachar District, Assam | © Joel Kyndiah

Held by the Land

The bamboo bends, but it remembers. An elder crouches at the roadside, coaxing length and line from memory, not measurement. His hands know what the eyes don’t need to check – how far to space the slats, where to knot the cord, how much tension the weave can bear.

Nearby, fence stands - gentle, irregular, precise. hums. It holds back the road, cradles a garden, and draws a soft line between house and open field.

Bamboo does more than build fences. It once steered boats as oars, held up homes as thatched roofs—forms now fading from use, but not from memory.

This is not construction. It is continuity. Here, craft is not merely a skill, but a daily language. Where the land is not occupied, but held.

And in every split cane and weathered edge, a quiet lesson – the future doesn’t always need to be built new, it only needs to be remembered well.

March & May 2025 | Cachar District, Assam | © Anushri Tiwari

Tastes of the Terrain

Over three days of fieldwork, every meal offered a quiet glimpse into the rhythms of local life.

These plates held more than nourishment – paneer made from local dairy, banana flower chutney laced with fiery bhoot jolokia, bright slices of kaji nemu, and seasonal vegetables stir-fried with care and love.

On one day, a dish of small fish appeared; on another, the tangy depth of eromba – a Manipuri delicacy with the sharp edge of fermentation – left a lasting impression. Simple, seasonal, and unspokenly thoughtful, these meals reflected the agro-ecological diversity of the region.

Each one was a form of culinary ethnography—anchored in soil, season, and shared memory—linking home-grown food systems to culture and care.

May 2025 | Cachar District, Assam | © Brinda Kashyap, Joel Kyndiah & Anushri Tiwari

Where Memory Meets the Map

Hands move slowly across a large sheet of paper, sketching the shape of a lake from memory. Elders trace its bends and banks with remarkable ease—crayons marking what their eyes have long held.

On the other side, satellite imagery of the same waterbody glows on a screen. Y4M members lean in, marking sampling points for a water quality study.

What emerges is not contrast, but co-creation. The satellites confirm what the community already knows. This is participatory mapping in action—a process where local memory and digital tools work side by side, not in opposition. For it is not always about accuracy, but about ownership: who gets to map, who gets to speak, and how research can listen.

This is geography rooted in presence—one map drawn from pixels and projection; the other, from footsteps, seasons, and long-held observation. Each strengthens the other—science guided by memory, memory sharpened by image.

“What else have we always known, but never traced?”

May 2025 | Rupaibali Anua, Cachar District, Assam | © Joel Kyndiah

Still Water, Tangled Roots

This stretch of the lake is lined with bamboo poles and netting—an improvised barrier constructed to contain the lateral spread of water hyacinth, which has rapidly expanded over the past three decades. While visually understated, these physical structures reflect an urgent, community-led response to ecological overflow.

During Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), community members reported a significant increase in hyacinth cover, particularly in areas adjacent to agricultural runoff zones. The water quality analysis (May 2025) further supported these observations, with elevated phosphate levels at multiple sampling points, suggesting nutrient-loading likely linked to runoff and chemical fish farming practices.

Though the lake retains its visual charm, its ecological balance is increasingly fragile. These makeshift embankments are not a long-term solution—but they represent a critical, grassroots attempt at managing invasive species.

March 2025 | Rupaibali Anua, Cachar District, Assam | © Anushri Tiwari

Lines that Hold the Lake

A raft drifts gently over still water, held in place by quiet hands. All around, the landscape breathes—netted boundaries stretch across the lake, hyacinths gather in clusters, clouds move slow and unbothered.

This is a working moment. The man on the raft is fishing. The water holds both promise and limit.

This is how many in the Meghna Basin live—with rivers, lakes, and wetlands, as source, space, and sometimes silence.

In its calm, the photograph holds the pace of life—where river and land have long shaped each other, and still do.

May 2025 | Rupaibali Anua, Cachar District, Assam | © Anushri & Brinda Kashyap

The Frame We Shared

A timer clicks. A blur of voices still lingers. Someone jokes off-camera. Another throws up a fist just a second too late. It’s imperfect, unposed, and unmistakably full of life.

This is not the end of the journey, just the close of a day. A day where stories were shared, questions asked, and laughter stretched long into the afternoon. Gathered here are the elders with memories older than maps, youth just beginning to find their footing in the landscape, and researchers learning to listen more than speak.

The frame isn’t about “us and them.” It’s about us, together, trying to understand something bigger—a lake, a village, a future that isn’t yet drawn. These kinds of days don’t always happen. When they do, they deserve to be remembered—not because they’re grand, but because they’re honest.

And maybe that’s where change begins.

May 2025 | Rupaibali Anua, Cachar District, Assam | GoPro Self Timer

Epilogue: From the River, Together

“We are the Youth for Meghna (Y4M)” — young professionals from across India, supported by IUCN, each rooted in different disciplines but walking the same muddy paths in the Meghna landscape.

Here, our work is to learn-together.

To learn from communities, from each other, and from the basin itself.

(Left to Right) Joel Kyndiah, Omkar Balel, Brinda Kashyap, Dr. Priyanka Sarkar, Anup Kumar Saha, Anushri Tiwari (seated), Ashu Balhara, Dr Mrinal Saikia, Jaidev Joshi (Programme Officer, Water & Wetlands, IUCN India Country Office).

May 2025 | Barak River, Cachar District, Assam | Our thanks to Swapan Ashangbam, Sanalembi Devi & Anil Singha for anchoring the intensive study