As Mojiran Nesa lay on a wrinkled bed sheet on the ground, staring at the plastic tube of the drip bought from a local “medicine man”, Sajiran Nesa, 14, hovered close by, terrified of what would happen if her 38-year-old mother did not survive the diarrhoea plaguing her in the middle of the unprecedented floods in Assam.


Life for the teenager has been incredibly difficult since her family was forced to leave their village in September last year, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government evicted hundreds of Bengali-speaking Muslim families from Dhalpur in central Assam, claiming they were illegal settlers from neighbouring Bangladesh.


Nine months later, on June 15, the makeshift houses they made from tin and jute on a different piece of land, a kilometre from where they used to live, were washed away in the floods.


Mojiran, her husband, Md Shaban Ali, an agricultural labourer, and their four children were holed up at the Kirakara Anchalik high school, around 3km from the temporary settlement, when Article 14 met them on June 21, along with 20 other families who had fled with a few clothes, some rice and pulses to live on, and documents such as their PAN cards, and the print out of where their name appears in the National Register of Citizens (NRC).


“My mother needs a doctor and proper treatment. Her health has not improved,” said Sajiran, her voice breaking. “Neither a medical team nor anyone from the government has come to see us.”

The primary healthcare centre (PHC) is only 50 m away from where Mojiran lay in the high school, under a tin roof, but has been closed since the eviction.


Babul Hussain, a 23-year-old farmer, who was evicted last year, and whose house was washed away in the floods, said neither a doctor nor a pharmacist had come to the PHC since the eviction and there was no one to dispense medicines.

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