ESCAPING A RIVER’S WRATH
Frequent floods and erosion by the brahmaputra in Assam have changed human settlement patterns dramatically, leading to conflict. Climate change threatens to make things worse. A report
Frequent floods and erosion by the Brahmaputra in Assam have changed human settlement patterns dramatically, leading to conflict. Climate change threatens to worsen it
It’s been a month since the flood waters have finally receded in Assam, but 35-year-old Anwara Khatoon and her family are still living in a one-room shelter built on an elevated mud platform, to escape flooding. Khatoon was one of hundreds of people stranded on a patch of a river island called Tapajuli Pathar (these islands are locally known as char), close to the Brahmaputra in lower Assam’s Barpeta district.
Her husband, Shahjahan Ali, recalls how one morning in mid-July, he woke up to find the river Beki (a Brahmaputra tributary) dangerously close to his house. Panicstricken, the family decided to move. “It was pouring that day. We couldn’t even shout for help,” says Ali. “We shifted our belongings to a house nearby, but after a while we realised that it wouldn’t survive the angry waves either.”
By noon, the river had swept away the two houses, their farm land and the family’s prized possession – a cow. Tapajuli lost 54 houses this year.
Almost an annual ritual, the pre-monsoon floods in April and May had already disrupted life in upper Assam. By July 29, floods had affected more than 1.8 million people across the state and resulted in over 30 deaths, according to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA).
In the same week, flood waters in Atowar Rahman’s tin-roofed house rose to touch his knees. In the already confined space of his house, the kitchen – its utensils, gas stove and a cylinder – was moved to a wooden cot in one corner, while two other cots placed on top of each other, kept his wife and children dry. Rahman, who became a father just a few months ago, was doing all he could to keep his newborn son away from the slowly rising waters.
“Thankfully, the flood water didn’t hold for long this time. Our house was flooded for around 15 days,” says Rahman.
The increasingly frequent and intense floods force thousands to migrate from the river, changing human settlement patterns. In some places, displacement has even led to conflict. Ethnic friction in lower Assam, especially in the region bordering the Bodoland region, can be traced to migration. Inhabited by Bengali-speaking Muslims, the displaced are often assumed to be illegal immigrants from bordering Bangladesh.
MADDENING FLOODS
The recent history of floods go back to August 15, 1950, when a severe earthquake altered the course and bed levels of many rivers, especially the Brahmaputra. Since the 1950s, according to some estimates, major floods have struck Assam around 25 times. The government puts the figure at about 15. In the past five years, floods have ravaged the state every single year.
The mighty Brahmaputra – from its origin in the Himalayas in southern Tibet till it merges in the Bay of Bengal sea in Bangladesh – covers a distance of 2,880 km. It flows for 916 km in India.
The river is feared as much as it is loved. Assamese singer Bhupen Hazarika wrote about the old man river, the Burha Luit (another name for Brahmaputra) as he called it in his song. He rebuked the river for its indifference to people’s sufferings.
Just like it brings prosperity to millions, it takes prosperity away too. Writing about the floods, Assamese singer Jayanta Hazarika says, “Oh the maddening floods of Luit, where are you heading this time? Whom are you chasing again with the frightening sound of your waves?”
Rahman and his fellow villagers are a part of an economy that remains largely rural and agrarian. The river is central to the creation of livelihoods. About 87 per cent of the total land available in the state is for agricultural cultivation, which mostly falls under the Brahmaputra river basin.
A TALE OF LOSS
Floods and displacement are a way of life. People have developed methods to deal with the situation, including raised hand pumps and houses on stilts.
The Tapajuli Pathar char, inhabited by over 1,800 Bengali-speaking Muslims, is one of the most backward areas of Assam. “We lose our crops to the river, predominantly rice and jute, when the floods are early,” says 60-year-old Noor Mohammad. “In my lifetime, I’ve seen the river take away my house at least 10 times, and every time we have constructed a new one.”
Forced by abject poverty and lack of public facilities, every family has sent at least one of its members to faraway cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai. “Almost all the young men in this village work as urban labour, primarily as construction labour, in the cities,” says 18-year-old Mohammad Ali Hossain. “I earn around ₹8,000 to 9,000 per month in the city. We work on the farms when at home, but spend around six-eight months outside the state.”
Far away, in the upper part of the river in Dhemaji’s Simen Chapori, Kamal Basumatary has a similar tale to tell. Basumatary lives with his family in a bamboo hut alongside a road that used to go to his village. Now it leads to the river.
About 120 families from four villages were displaced last year during the floods and have been living on the roadside since. “It [Brahmaputra] was around 1.5 km from its current position now,” says 60-year-old Basumatary, an ethnic Bodo. “In just a year, it took the whole chunk away. We farmed on the little bit of land we had. Now we work as manual labourers in the city.”
The cycle of devastation continues in the dry season too. Large chunks of land crumble from the edges into the river. Erosion is another major issue people of Assam have to deal with. In 2010, the then-revenue minister Bhumidhar Barman claimed in the state assembly that erosion had become more dangerous than floods. Five years later, in the assembly, he said that 36,981 houses were eroded in the past five years. The districts of Dhubri, Jorhat and Barpeta, he said, were the worst affected. Most of the char villages are located in these districts.
In Kamrup district’s Kathalguri char, 40-year-old Aamir Ali was gathering his belongings from a bamboo hut that was falling apart. Surrounded by the river, the char was accessible only by boat. “My house was right there,” Aamir says pointing towards the crumbling edge. “The river took it away around two months ago.”
Why do people stay in these places despite the constant fear of displacement? “Kot jabo? (Where will we go?),” says a Tapajuli villager. “It is so expensive outside the char to purchase a land. A small piece of land costs upward of ₹3-5 lakhs. Where will we find that kind of money?”
CHANGING CLIMATE
What does all this mean at a time when climate around the world is changing rapidly? For uneducated villagers, it has meant frequent, erratic rainfall. Some say the monsoon flood seasons that were usually predictable have become more volatile.
When I met joint secretary Nandita Hazarika at the ASDMA office in February, she shared her concerns about the erratic rainfall. “Earlier, we had two to three spates of floods, but now we are witnessing four and even five phases, starting as early as April till October,” says Hazarika.
The climate change report emphasises the possibility of flash floods caused by cloud bursts. “High-magnitude floods are more capable of causing high-intensity erosion,” says DC Goswami, former professor at Gauhati University’s Department of Environmental Science. “This worsens the already grim situation caused by annual flooding.”
Two years ago, when I visited Kokrajhar, a region bordering Dhubri, a Bodo friend pointed out men constructing bamboo huts. He wanted to show me how ‘Bangladeshis’ are taking the land that belongs to Bodos, a tribal community living in the Bodoland districts. The conflict between Bodos and outsiders (often Bengali-speaking Muslims) has been simmering since the early ’80s and has led to deadly riots. More than 150 people were killed in 2014, and earlier in 2012, in Bodo areas.
Arupjyoti Saikia, a historian at Guwahati’s Indian Institute of Technology, suggests that migration is a consequence of the agrarian economy crisis Assam is going through. “The people from the char-chaporis were the invisible people of Assam, often ignored and overlooked,” says Saikia. “The loss in agricultural land has brought them in direct conflict with the people in urban centres. It has made them ‘visible’.”
Are the floods misunderstood? To understand recurring devastation, perhaps the river needs to be understood in terms of climate change, erosion, floods, migration patterns – and not reported with shock and surprise each year.
According to Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, these are just the beginnings of warnings. “Only when we are faced with a situation, we react, but we like to ignore it the rest of the year. It’s like an elephant in the room. We don’t want to acknowledge it,” he says.
Over the telephone from Tapajuli, Atowar says life goes on as usual after the flood. Even though he has become used to this life, his newborn child, he says, will need to understand nature. “I pray that my children don’t have to go through this, live a life like mine,” says Rahman. The villagers had told me earlier that no one could say how long the char will survive. It could be gone by next year or stay there for generations. The river knows.
“This research was partly supported by Himalayan Climate Change Adaptation Programme implemented jointly by ICIMOD, CICERO and GRIDArendal and is funded by the Governments of Norway and Sweden.”
‘ONLY WHEN WE ARE FACED WITH A SITUATION, WE REACT, BUT WE LIKE TO IGNORE IT THE REST OF THE YEAR. IT’S LIKE AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM’