ABSTRACT
The 2020 Assam gas and oil leak, also referred as the Baghjan gas leak, is a Natural gas blowout that happened in Oil India Limited’s Baghjan Oilfield in the district of Tinsukia, Assam, India on 27 May 2020. The blowout occurring at Well No. 5 in the Baghjan Oil Field, resulting in a leak of natural gas, subsequently caught fire on 9 June 2020, and was finally doused on 15th of November after burning for 159 days, becoming India’s longest Oil well fire. The disaster has resulted in three deaths (officially), large-scale local evacuations, and environmental damage and the locals losing their homes, belongings and livelihoods and separated families.
Thus, after documenting the disaster and emphasizing the fact that a disaster has its greatest impact at the local level; this paper aims at understanding the disaster at Baghjan from the perspective of the local disaster survivors. The study is guided by the experience of three women survivors with three different disaster response and recovery context of the same Disaster. While using qualitative methodologies, the study tries to document the unique personal accounts, in their own words and using their own personal time lines with respect to the disaster. This Phenomenological attempt draws out micro-histories of the three women survivors taken as individual subjects through unstructured interviews, and while doing so, it would shed light on how the interface of human, environment and disaster is of a complex and dynamic character which cannot be understood in a singular or linear aspect.
