My paddy field is not Sikkim’s dustbin

On June 9, there was heavy rainfall in Ravangla, Sikkim, and the surrounding areas. Due to the heavy downpour, there was some damage to the infrastructure.

For the past year, I have been trying to revive red rice cultivation in my paddy field at Makhim, near Ravangla. Anyone who has worked a field knows what that means. It means clearing weeds by hand.

It means repairing bunds. It means praying that the water arrives at the right time and in the right quantity. It means believing that traditional farming still has a place in modern Sikkim.

The floodwaters that hit my paddy fields also brought garbage. Mountains of it.

Plastic bottles. Food wrappers. Medicine packets. Old clothes. Broken glass bottles. Disposable cups. Polythene bags. Every kind of waste imaginable came rushing down with the floodwaters from the streams that pass through our area.

Within hours, my paddy field looked less like farmland and more like a dumping ground. The streams that should carry clean mountain water now carry the carelessness of an entire society.

What angers me most is that this garbage did not appear magically. Someone threw it there. Someone living upstream, in the settlements around 14th Mile, 15th Mile, 16th Mile and other areas, looked at a bottle, a wrapper or a bag and decided that the stream would take care of it.

The stream did. It delivered it straight to my field. People proudly say that Sikkim is India’s cleanest state.

I have begun to wonder whether Sikkim is clean only where cameras are pointed.

We see beautiful drone shots on Instagram. We see influencers praising pristine landscapes. We see tourism advertisements showing crystal-clear rivers and green mountains. We celebrate awards and rankings.

But who sees what arrives in the streams during the monsoon? Who sees the plastic trapped in paddy fields? Who sees the broken bottles buried in agricultural land?

Who sees farmers spending hours picking up somebody else’s garbage instead of tending their crops?

Cleanliness is not measured by how beautiful a place looks on social media. It is measured by what happens when nobody is watching.

And right now, our streams are telling a very different story. I am tired of hearing that people in Sikkim are environmentally conscious.

If that were entirely true, why are medicine wrappers floating down mountain streams?

Why are alcohol bottles reaching agricultural fields? Why are plastic packets appearing in irrigation channels?

Why is a farmer forced to clean up waste generated by people he has never met?

I want to know whom I should approach. Should I complain to the Gram Panchayat? Should I approach government officials? Should I file a written complaint with the Rural Development Department or the concerned authorities?

Or will the responsibility simply be passed from one office to another while the next rainfall brings another load of garbage into my land?

This is no longer just an issue of cleanliness. It is an issue of agriculture. It is an issue of public responsibility. It is an issue of respect.

When you throw waste into a stream, you are not making the problem disappear. You are simply transferring it to someone else. In this case, that someone else is a farmer trying to grow food.

The truth is harsh. Every bottle thrown casually into a nala has a destination. Every wrapper tossed from a vehicle window has a destination. Every plastic bag dumped into a stream has a destination.

That destination is often somebody’s field, somebody’s village, somebody’s water source, somebody’s livelihood.

Yesterday, that destination was my paddy field. I am angry. Not because of the flood. Floods are part of nature.

I am angry because the garbage is not. The garbage is a choice. And until we stop making that choice, all our claims about being a clean, environmentally conscious state are nothing more than a performance. If nobody else is willing to start the conversation, perhaps I will.

Perhaps it is time for villagers, schools, panchayats, churches, monasteries, government departments and community organisations to adopt streams and monitor them. Perhaps it is time to publicly identify dumping hotspots.

Perhaps it is time to stop congratulating ourselves and start looking honestly at what is flowing through our waterways.

Because if this continues, farmers like me will spend more time collecting plastic than growing rice. And that should shame all of us.

Views expressed are that of the author and do not reflect EastMojo’s stance on this or any other issue. The author is a farmer and registered monk based out of Ravangla, Sikkim.

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