Climate refugees from Bangladesh face a political storm in India
A 22-YEAR-OLD from Satkhira district in southwest Bangladesh, bordering the Indian state of West Bengal, shared the story of how she and her family had ended up in India some two years ago. Back in Bangladesh, she recalled, they lived on just BDT 200 a day – just over USD 2 at the time – the meager income her father made working in a biscuit factory. One day, he stopped receiving his salary. Their debts began to mount. Then, in 2020 and 2021, Cyclone Amphan and Cyclone Yaas struck their village in close succession. Soon they lost all their belongings, including their home.
The 22-year-old’s father then worked gruelling hours as a farm labourer, but he was always underpaid. “Even food was a luxury. Sometimes, there were days when we didn’t eat at all,” she said. Her father was unable to repay the debt he had taken on to rebuild their house after the cyclones.
“Goons threatened to kidnap me and force me to marry one of them to recover their losses. I was 16 at the time,” she recalled. “That’s when my father contacted a family member living in India, and we decided to leave the country for good.” The family crossed the porous border into India about two years ago, and she became one more of the many undocumented migrants from Bangladesh pushed into India by poverty and the climate crisis.
We spoke to the 22-year-old from Satkhira huddled in a van in a village in West Bengal, a couple of hours walk from the Bangladesh border. Her gaze constantly darted to the people passing by. She feared that if her origins were revealed, she might be sent back.
Undocumented migrants from Bangladesh – especially Muslim migrants – face an uncertain future in India. Their presence is increasingly scrutinised, and Hindu nationalist groups, including India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), vilify them as “illegal immigrants” who pose a threat to the country’s security. In recent months, Bengali-speaking Muslims, indiscriminately labelled “illegal Bangladeshis” even if they are of Indian origin, have faced crackdowns from authorities in several parts of the country, including Delhi. In an increasingly Islamophobic India, their vilification and targeting is unlikely to abate even as escalating climate risks look likely to drive more people from their homes.
In India, the 22-year-old works as a babysitter, earning about INR 5000 a month – around USD 55 – while her parents work in a brick factory and make around INR 1000 for a full day of back-breaking work. “We don’t want to go back to Bangladesh,” she said. “We could barely survive in Bangladesh. Here, we at least earn 1000 rupees a day, and that helps us get by.”
Her family has received support from relatives in Kolkata, who have promised to help them with paperwork to secure their stay in India. She appeared unaware of their precarious status. The family has received Aadhaar cards – digital identification available for every resident of India – which she mistakenly believed made them Indian citizens. That will not be enough to shield them if they ever face official scrutiny.
THE LAND BORDER between India and Bangladesh is 4096 kilometres long. Five Indian states stand along it: West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. The border runs through jungles, hills, rivers and farmland, making it easy to cross undetected at many points despite extensive Indian efforts at fencing and policing. About 790 kilometres of the border follows rivers, where shifting courses, floods and erosion complicate demarcation. Many villages and even individual houses straddle the border, particularly in West Bengal, making policing especially difficult.
A visit to the border at Panitar, in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, revealed its vulnerabilities. The fencing on the Bangladesh side appeared tattered, and the Indian side was separated from it only by a narrow canal. Officials present at the time, who refused to be interviewed for this story, mentioned that infiltration was a common occurrence.
Earlier this year, following an attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, Indian authorities moved over 2000 people across the Bangladesh border – at times at gunpoint – after a “verification” exercise in Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam. They had been identified as Bangladeshi migrants, but at least some of them turned out to be Indian citizens. In June, Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, said that between 300 and 400 Bengali-speaking workers from Itahar, in Uttar Dinajpur district, were being detained in the state of Rajasthan despite producing Indian identity documents. Several similar cases of Bengali migrants facing crackdowns have been reported from numerous parts of India in recent months.
Climate change-induced migration is becoming a growing concern in West Bengal and Bangladesh, with additional push factors such as poverty and conflict compounding the issue. Both places, with extensive low-lying areas and located at the northern tip of the Bay of Bengal, are severely vulnerable to cyclones, and climate change is thought to be leading to an increase in their frequency and intensity. At least five tropical cyclones have hit West Bengal since May 2020, and rising sea levels are causing erosion in the Sundarban, the extensive mangrove ecosystem that straddles the West Bengal and Bangladesh coasts. A study by the International Institute of Environment and Development has found that households in several regions of Bangladesh, like Sylhet in the northeast and Pirojpur in the southwest, have seen their livelihoods disrupted and experienced food insecurity as a result of climate disasters, including cyclones but also slower phenomena like riverine or coastal erosion and salinity intrusion. Households impacted by climate risks were much more likely to migrate both internally and internationally, the study shows.
This movement, especially across borders, often happens quietly and without legal protection, as there is no regional policy or framework to address climate migration, explained Anamitra Anurag Danda, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank. “People will move because of environmental changes,” Danda said. “Take parts of Sindh, in Pakistan, for example. Those areas are going to become so dry that nobody can live there. So, where will those people go?”
Danda added, “The first thing we need to do is recognise that parts of the world are becoming uninhabitable. We’re having trouble accepting this because we’ve lived through a very stable period and haven’t experienced anything like this before. Our institutions, our laws, our policy frameworks, they simply don’t have this within their frame of reference.”
Sohanur Rahman, a Bangladeshi climate-justice activist and the executive coordinator of YouthNet Global, a platform for youth-led organisations, explained that climate-induced internal displacement is a critical issue in Bangladesh, with an estimated 20 million people projected to be internally displaced by 2050.
Bikash Das is the general secretary of the non-profit Basirhat Initiative for Rural Dedication, which works with survivors of trafficking in West Bengal, including Bangladeshi migrants. He said many Bangladeshis are fleeing climate change, conflict and political violence in their country. He pointed to a string of cyclones and the ousting of the Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year, which has triggered a wave of persecution against supporters of her party, the Awami League.
Das described how climate change phenomena, especially floods, have driven soil salinisation in many areas, making agriculture unsustainable. “This environmental shift has devastated the local economy, leaving families with no means of livelihood,” he added. “That’s when traffickers step in, offering jobs that seem like a way out but often lead to trafficking, forced labour or sexual exploitation.” Das explained that many of those rescued by his organisation “didn’t leave because they wanted to, they left because they had no choice.”
Many migrants are stuck in legal limbo, with no official citizenship or rights to settle anywhere. To compound the issue, India and Bangladesh do not officially recognise refugees under international law, as neither country has signed the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. In both, climate-displaced women are among the most vulnerable people, especially susceptible to violence, trafficking and exploitation.