We are glad to announce that Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (RKMVERI) will be conducting a special colloquium on “The Landscape, Adaptive traditions and Modernity: Historical Patterns of Agriculture in the Floodplains of Bengal” on 13 February 2026, 12 Noon at Seminar Hall, Narendrapur Campus.

Speaker : Dr. Shilanjan Bhattacharyya, Department of Zoology, West Bengal State University Barasat
Co-ordinator: Prof. Abhijit Chakrabarti

Abstract

Agricultural people from Indus valley, very likely migrated in East-South direction following the course of Ganges to reach the western rims of the riverine floodplains of Bengal. Other groups of agriculturists arrived from the valley plains of the Eastern boundaries of the Bengal plains. 

The riverine plains posed serious challenges to these ancestral agriculturists being swampy and flooded by monsoonal rivers. Though the waters are freshwater and silty soils are very rich in organic nutrients, dry uplands are scarce to live on and crops that can do well despite prolonged waterlogging and seasonal floods. They found a species of edible seed yielding grass that grows naturally in the lowlands and does well while waterlogged. It’s also possible that they (especially, eastern  border migrants) might have already domesticated a similar grass.