Every monsoon, for millennia, Assam’s plains have seen floods.
The only things that change from year to year are the numbers — of casualties, people affected, crores given in relief — and the names of the main characters in the recurring tragedy.
Experts say nobody understands the river holistically.
(Text and picture captions by Samrat)
Every monsoon, for millennia, Assam’s plains have seen floods — that is why these riverine plains are called floodplains in the first place.
The principal river that flows through these plains is the Brahmaputra, after which the valley is named. The river is easily the most significant geographical feature of the valley, and the region. There are at least 21 large rivers that are its tributaries.
Taken together, this network of rivers extends like arteries from the stark Himalayan heights of Tibet, across the green hills and valleys of the Northeast and north Bengal, into the plains of Bangladesh down to the Bay of Bengal. In summer, the Himalayan snows start to melt. Come monsoon, when heavy rains lash the region, the rivers swell.
This year, the numbers of those affected are higher than usual. The rains have been unusually heavy, and the Brahmaputra has reached close to or exceeded its highest recorded water level in several places. So far, 154 people have died and the toll is still rising. More than 14 lakh people are affected.
The damage is not limited to humans alone. At least 225 animals from the Kaziranga National Park have died in the floods.
Kaziranga is bound by the Brahmaputra on one side and the Karbi Hills on the other. Between the park and the hills is a major state highway, the Assam Trunk Road, which cuts off animal corridors. The road is flanked by paddy fields and a number of tea estates.
According to Rohini Saikia, Divisional Forest Officer under whose administrative area the Kaziranga park falls, the annual floods are a “necessary evil”. The survival of the fittest is a law of nature, Saikia points out, and therefore weak and old animals dying of natural causes in the wild should not be considered unnatural. “Kaziranga and its animals have been surviving floods for centuries… the only real cause of concern is animals dying because of vehicles.
“If there are no floods there will be no crops, and no Kaziranga National Park either,” says Shanti Nath, a farmer from Lokrakharia Dohgaon village, which was hit by floods.
The bottom line is possibly this: we need a radical rethinking of the entire flood-control system we have. One that keeps in mind local socio-environmental features, as well as draws on some of the sound sciences now globally available, says Mitul Baruah of Ashoka University.
“The business-as-usual attitude won’t work,” says Baruah. “I think it comes down to the violation of basic human rights. It’s as if some lives are just disposable.”