In Pictures: The Disappearing Island of Ghoramara
By 2020, studies claim that this island among many others will be submerged by heavy water flow from the Himalayas.
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Since 1969, at least half of the Ghoramara landmass has disappeared under water, leaving only five square kilometres above sea level. Ghoramara is an island located 150 km south of Kolkata, in the Sundarban Delta complex of the Bay of Bengal.
Tanmoy Bhaduri, a freelance news and documentary photographer based in Kolkata, visited the island in the Bay of Bengal, to document the impact of climate change on human beings on Ghoramara Islands.
Below are a series of photos titled Living on the Edge taken on 27 and 28 February 2016 by Bhaduri.
Lohachara, a former island near Ghoramara, is now submerged in the Bay of Bengal.
In 2010, researchers at Jadavpur University concluded that 15 percent of the Sunderban islands will sink by 2020. Tiny Ghoramara, as well as bigger, neighboring islands, are likely to disappear completely.
According to the last election data, 3,000 people officially reside on Ghoramara, but many men migrate to the southern part of India to work in construction sites in Kerala.
Climate refugees from both Lohachara and Ghoramara villages have fled to nearby Sagar Island, where they live in camps built by the government of West Bengal.
Tanmoy Bhaduri (born 1992) is a freelance news and documentary photographer based in Kolkata, completed Post Graduate Diploma in Mass Communication from University of Calcutta.
He works with national and international publications such as The Times of India, Getty Images, Corbis Images, Associated Press, Zuma Press. His first documentary Woven Dreams based on Bengal’s Heritage Handloom Workers published in 2015.
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