Sandeshkhali I

The Hungry Tide
In the beginning…there was nothing but forests here. There were no people, no embankments, no fields. Just kada and bada, mud and mangrove. At high tide most of the land vanished under water. And everywhere you looked there were predators – tigers, crocodiles, sharks, leopards…This was a time when people were so desperate for the land that they were willing to sell themselves for a bigha or two.

Sandeshkhali I is a community development block that forms an administrative division in Basirhat subdivision of North 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal.

Nazat is located at 22°27′16″N 88°50′45″E / 22.454532°N 88.845834°E / 22.454532; 88.845834

Sandeshkhali I CD Block is bounded by Minakhan and Hasnabad CD Blocks in the north, Hingalganj CD Block in the east, Sandeshkhali II CD Block in the south and Bhangar II and Bhangar I CD Blocks in South 24 Parganas district in the west.

Sandeshkhali I CD Block is part of the North Bidyadhari Plain, one of the three physiographic regions in the district located in the lower Ganges Delta. The area is full of marshes and salt water lakes. The Bidyadhari has a long course through the central part of the district. The wide Dalma and Besti rivers flow through the area.

Sandeshkhali I CD Block has an area of 182.30 km². It has 1 panchayat samity, 8 gram panchayats, 99 gram sansads (village councils), 30 mouzas and 30 inhabited villages. Nazat police station serves this block. Headquarters of this CD Block is at Nazat.

Gram panchayats of Sandeshkhali I block/ panchayat samiti are: Bayermari I, Bayermari II, Kalinagar, Sarberia Agarhati, Nazat I, Nazat II, Sehera Radhanagar and Hatgachhi.

The Sundarbans is a flat lowland susceptible to storm surges along the 260 km shoreline of the Bay of Bengal. The total expanse of Sundarbans is about 2.05 million hectares (8,000 square miles). Of this, only 0.42 million hectares (1,629 square miles or 10,43,000 acres) are under the reserve forests including about 0.19 million hectares covered by creeks and channels. The area is prone to natural calamities such as cyclones, thunderstorms with occasional hail and floods. There are more than 63,400 km of embankments but the floods caused by high tidal bores, often wash away much of the embankments, already weakened and broken by earlier cyclonic storms.