It’s A Shame That Assam’s Recurring Flood And Erosion Problem Has Not Been Addressed In 70 Years

The raging waters of Brahmaputra river wreak havoc to the lives and livelihoods of lakhs of people in Assam every year. The state stays in the news for long and short spells between June and October every year for the repeated waves of floods that devastate it. And this has been both a sickening and saddening experience for the people of Assam who are left at the mercy of nature by criminal callousness on the part of successive governments that have ruled the state over the last seven decades.

This year, too, the first spell of floods in the state have affected more than 5.6 lakh people in six districts of the state, inundated lakhs of hectares of land, claimed 17 lives, submerged 727 villages, left nearly 2 lakh people homeless and caused losses amounting to an estimated Rs 150 crore. And this is only the first spell; by the time the monsoons end and the Brahmaputra reverts to its sedate self by end-October, the devastation and deaths would have leapt to many times this figure.

Given the recurring floods and the consequent devastation caused by the river that originates in the Mansarovar lake, it ought to have been the topmost priority of the state’s rulers to address this. But, unfortunately, little has been done to address this issue. While floods are a natural phenomenon and cannot be prevented, what ought to have been tackled many decades ago is the erosion of the river banks that is a far greater devastation than the floods. Such is the apathy that even though an average of 80 square kilometres of fertile farmlands is washed away by the raging flood waters every year, riverbank erosion does not even qualify as a ‘disaster’ and, thus, does not attract relief from a government bound by archaic rules and statutes.

Assam’s water resources department officials say that since 1954, the state has lost 4.3 lakh hectares of land due to erosion. That is about 7.4 per cent of the state’s total land area and, to put it in perspective, about seven times the land area of Brihattar Mumbai. The average annual loss is 8,000 hectares. For instance, Majuli, once the largest river island in the world and the seat of Assam’s renowned Vaishnavite culture, has shrunk from 1,250 square kilometres (sq/km) in the first decade of the last century to 352 sq/km in 2014 when the last survey was carried out. It’s land mass would have shrunk to an estimated 330 sq/km now. Due to the Brahmaputra eroding its banks with frightening and devastating regularity every year, the width of the river has increased to as much as 15 km in some places. In 1928, the Brahmaputra covered 3,870 sq/km of area in Assam; in 1975 this area had increased to 4,850 sq/km and in 2006 to 6,080 sq/km.

According to Assam’s Water Resources Minister Keshab Mahanta, the average area affected by floods every year is 9.31 lakh hectares and the average annual loss is over Rs 200 crore. In the years when floods are more intense and extensive, this figure goes up; in 2004, for instance, the loss was estimated at Rs 771 crore. Nearly 50 lakh people are affected on an average every year by floods in the state. But these figures do not include the loss due to erosion, which is more devastating and permanent.

The following table provides an idea of the devastation caused by erosion:

According to the department’s provisional statistics, more than 30,000 hectares of farmlands and homestead land were lost in the 10-year period from 2007 to 2016 and more than 25,000 families were affected during the period. Mahanta says that it is erosion, much more than floods, that is the critical issue facing Assam. “It is not just loss of land, but the resultant problems that are very acute. Families lose their farmlands and face devastating economic loss. Erosion snatches away the livelihoods of lakhs of people. Thousands of families get displaced and have to migrate to other areas. From the status of land-owning farmers, they are reduced to poor landless migrants who become daily labourers. Children of the affected families are forced to discontinue their education and the families are vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation. Migration of the affected families also stokes social tensions, apart from breaking the social and familial structures that are critical for maintaining social harmony,” said Mahanta.

Tackling erosion has, most unfortunately, never been a priority for successive governments in the state. Erosion control measures have been, at best, ad hoc. Endemic corruption and official apathy, as well as stop-gap measures, lack of expertise, bureaucratic red tape and the familiar excuse of shortage of funds has hobbled flood control measures. Instead of formulating a concrete blueprint for styming erosion in the entire Brahmaputra valley, erosion-control measures are localised and restricted to building embankments in an unscientific manner, throwing boulders and concrete and bamboo porcupines (contraptions designed to reduce water currents and thus prevent erosion) on to the river flowing by erosion-prone areas and paving the riverbank with sandbags and boulders.

But, as with many works undertaken by the government, erosion control measures are also mired in corruption. The works are undertaken just before or even after the onset of the rainy season and, thus, have little effect. Every year, weak embankments constructed with taxpayers’ money get washed away by flood waters. Apart from the poor quality of construction, they are also constructed in unscientific manner and do little to prevent erosion. In fact, at many places, embankments have only compounded and accelerated erosion. That is because the decision to build, repair and strengthen embankments is left to bureaucrats and disinterested or ill-qualified engineers. Also, the construction or repair of embankments and these getting damaged or washed away, thus necessitating their repairs or reconstruction, is a cycle that benefits the contractors, engineers, bureaucrats and politicians, even though it devastates lakhs of people and causes irreversible loss to the state.

Admittedly, the Flood and River Erosion Management Agency of Assam that was established in 2011 has now framed an integrated programme to check riverbank erosion. A top executive of the agency said that long-term measures are being undertaken in three areas of the state most prone to erosion at a cost of $150 million (about rupees 1,125 crore). Of this amount, the Asian Development Bank is putting in $120 million. “Erosion has been largely controlled in the areas where we have undertaken the works,” he said. But the problem is that a much larger area needs to be covered and the amount of money earmarked for the gargantuan task of preventing riverbank erosion is too less.

Experts also say that erosion-control mechanisms suffer from a top-down approach. “Often, local people, with their collective knowledge culled over generations and from staying in close proximity to the river (Brahmaputra) know best which erosion control or flood control measure will work best. But they are always bypassed by the engineers and bureaucrats. The local people often know much more than the experts how the river will behave at a particular time. They know the underwater currents and which areas will get eroded. The problem is that their knowledge is not used,” rued G K Hazarika, a former engineer of the Brahmaputra Board, which is under the water resources department.

Also, say many in Assam, if China has been taming its rivers, including its infamous ‘river of sorrow’, the Huang He (read this article), there is no reason why similar measures cannot also be taken for controlling Brahmaputra’s floods, which devastate 9.31 hectares of the state’s landmass on an average every year and affect 50 lakh people annually.