HASSINUR ALOM

Lakhimpur: As Assam battles a deluge, a feisty girl from Lakhimpur district of the state took the help of the popular short-form video-making application TikTok to highlight the plight of her village.

A student of Lakhimpur Commerce College, Nikita Bora’s TikTok video has now become the talk of the town. Bora, who hails from Pukhuriporia village in Laluk, talks about the ‘tall promises of ministers before every election’ in the video.

Nikita uploaded the video on July 18th, 2019 and till now it has been liked over 9k times. She took the help of a song by the all-girl music band from Assam, Hurricane Girls to talk about the sufferings of her village folks. She has 13k fans and 67.7k hearts on TikTok.

Speaking to Time8, an elated Nikita said, “A few days back when my mother slipped and fell from the bridge, I decided to make a video on the dilapidated condition of the bamboo bridge. When I uploaded the video on TikTok, I didn’t know it will strike a chord with so many people. The video has also been shared on Facebook.”

She added, “As soon as the election dates are announced, ministers start making promises which they hardly fulfil. After the concrete bridge was washed away by the flood waters in 2008, we constructed the bamboo bridge. Even though we were promised of a concrete bridge, we are yet to get one. We risk our lives while crossing the bridge as it is our only mode of communication with the outside world.”

The flood in Assam has affected around 30.55 lakh people of 18 of the 33 districts in the state taking the death toll to 66, as on July 22nd, 2019. According to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority’s daily flood bulletin, the mighty Brahmaputra river is flowing above the danger level at Neamatighat in Jorhat and Dhubri, Jia Bharali at N T Road Crossing in Sonitpur and Kopili at Dharamtul in Nagaon.

Inputs: Pranati Sinha