Of course, since that time, we are told that border patrolling has improved: that some fencing has come up and that there are segments of tar-topped roads along these lines of human division. It would be another thirteen years before I returned here, to another part of the border, both from the Indian and the Bangladeshi sides.

In 1998, Anindita Dasgupta managed to put together a micro-level map of one little bit of the border between the two countries. A quick look helps even a casual observer understand how easy it is to cross parts of this border: the river and its many channels are the key. There is another major factor—human greed, of those in uniform and out of it, that helps sustain the profitable business of people smuggling.

How on earth can anyone control the stealthy movement of people over nine channels of the main river? There are rivers which are slashed by the boundary markers of either country. So are the chars. What is there to prevent people walking from one part of the char to the other and thus crossing into another country? There are no barbed wire fences here, no rolls of concertina wire, the BSF patrol boats are few and far between. Anyone who thinks that patrol boats can keep a watch on these many streams, which wend in and out among the many islands, is badly mistaken.

The story of movement in these areas is that of literally hopping from one char to another, from one channel to another, until you hit the main channel, or a large enough char near an old settlement and then, through existing contacts, to move in here before travelling to a further point.

In the patch of the river border shown on this map, there are not less than sixteen islands of differing sizes. In addition, there are ten chars and islands through which the international boundary runs. This is an administrative and policing nightmare. Just how is this policing to be done? Even if there are a few dozen kilometres to be covered, even if the Government of India posts 100 men to every kilometre, how are they to patrol? How are they to live on their boats, day in and day out, every day of the blistering summer, the cold winter and cope with the explosive power of the flooded river and the monsoon rains?

Many, on the small BSF river force already do that—but to what avail? The BSF Bay Wing, as it is called, has twenty-three speed boats and forty engine-fitted boats. The latter are basically country boats and much slower and less manoeverable than the former. These boats are responsible for patrolling the border areas as well as further inland.