Everywhere, the story was the same.

If there was poverty on the mainland, the impoverishment in the chars was many times worse. There were no roads, only mud paths; there were no colleges, only a handful of schools; there was no electricity, it was too expensive to build transmission towers that would carry power lines across this huge waterway. The technology didn’t exist, we were told.

We stopped at a Congress supporter’s home for lunch. The women were taken inside and we were served rice with an excellent chicken curry, a dal and a dry vegetable. Earlier, we sat and talked in the courtyard with the householder, a man with large properties and farms. I used my notebook to fan the still, warm, moist air. Nurul Islam and the MLA had villagers fanning them with bamboo and cane fans. They were being treated like visiting potentates—and why not? They controlled substantial funds which could be distributed among key supporters in their constituencies.

A young, bearded, college teacher was among those waiting for us. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers and a small white skull cap. He had travelled by cycle from another village about five kilometres away. Part of the journey was covered on a dugout or nouka, steered by wiry boatmen heaving on oars and sticking as close to the banks as possible. The cycle was loaded on to the boat. The rest of the yatra was completed on the cycle. A sudden surge of water or a storm could easily destroy these flimsy boats and their passengers.

‘You do not understand how bad conditions are in the chars,’ he remarked. ‘There are no doctors for miles, no decent colleges or proper schools, no jobs beyond what the land and the river give; no officer deigns to visit us. There are no veterinary doctors for the livestock.’ And it is the chars which feed the towns in southern Assam.

This is obvious to anyone who visits the small ghat at Dhubri early in the morning. By the time it is bright daylight—on a summer day, it is light as early as 4 a.m.—scores of country boats, most of them powered by diesel engines, others driven by sturdy oarsmen, are chugging into the river port, disgorging people and goods. Those disembarking include daily labourers as also people in search of jobs and government favours. Some have come in response to a summons, others to work at shops and businesses.