Prevention and management

Recent floods in Assam as well as low lying areas in places like Dimapur and other states, send a reminder to all the north eastern states that they need better and coordinated preparedness. The floodplains of the Brahmaputra and Barak rivers, which are fed by more than 50 smaller rivers play direct role in causing the floods. The Brahmaputra carries huge amounts of sediment, which settles on the riverbed over time. This raises the riverbed and reduces how much water the river can hold, making it overflow more often. Heavy monsoon rains – made worse by water flowing in from Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya – often trigger sudden flash floods. India’s flood-control strategy since 1954 has relied heavily on embankments, essentially large earthen walls meant to hold back rivers. Assam now has the largest embankment network in the country, stretching over 4,900 km. These also lead to embankment traps, meaning they hoard so much silt that once the rivers overflow, they cause more havoc. Also nearly 300 of these embankments, covering almost 4,000 km, are already older than their intended lifespan. The Brahmaputra Board, set up in 1980 to manage flood and erosion control, has struggled to get things done quickly. Along with embankments, the government has also built dams, reservoirs, and flood-forecasting systems. Over the last six decades, nearly Rs 30,000 crore has gone into embankments alone, with more money borrowed from abroad, including a $108 million loan from the World Bank. Despite all this spending, the floods keep coming back. Between May 2021 and February 2024, the state spent over Rs 1,500 crore on 105 projects to strengthen and build new embankments. Yearly budgets for this work also grew, from Rs 940 crore in 2022-23 to Rs 1,038 crore in 2024-25. Human activity adds to the damage. Cutting down forests in the Himalayan foothills speeds up soil erosion and causes more rainwater to run off into rivers instead of soaking into the ground. On top of this, people have built on natural floodplains and damaged wetlands like Assam’s bheels, which used to absorb extra water. Climate change is making heavy rains more frequent and intense, putting even more pressure on infrastructure that’s already struggling to cope. As mentioned earlier, the calamity also calls for close coordination between Assam and neighbouring states to manage the Brahmaputra and Barak river systems together. Pairing nature-based solutions with modern technology could help the region shift from constantly recovering from disasters to actually becoming resilient to them. Meanwhile, the hilly parts of Northeast India face a different but related danger-landslides. Experts say Nagaland as well as landslide-prone states urgently need better landslide management – banning construction on unstable slopes, restoring forests to hold the soil in place, and setting up early-warning sensors in high-risk areas like Mon and Tuli. Dimapur faces perennial water inundation and officials stress the need to fix drainage systems in Dimapur, protect water-absorbing wetlands, and check encroachment of drains. Importantly, early warning of impending torrential rains should lead to mandatory preventive and precautionary measures, not just advisories. In the light of the above, since rivers and rainfall don’t respect state borders, Assam and Nagaland need to plan for disasters together. Otherwise, without these changes, experts warn that tragedies like this month’s landslides and floods will keep happening.