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In Context
This year’s floods in Assam have been merciless.
What are Floods ?
There are 3 common types of floods:
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About Assam’s floods
- Assam is hit by several rounds of floods every year and around 40 percent of Assam’s land is prone to floods.
- Floods have been a way of life for people living in Assam.
- The lowlands and riverine areas bear the brunt of the deluge. The flooding pattern is usually repeated year-to-year.
- There is no standard pattern to the recurrence of mega, unpredictable floods.
- In the last century, they occurred in 1934, 1950, 1954, 1955, 1966, 1988 and 2004.
- The incidence of such megafloods depends on several variables like unusually high rainfall and the failure of critical embankments.
- Other man-made factors like deforestation, hill cutting, encroachments and destruction of wetlands have also worsened the flood situation.
- Climate change is set to lead to more frequent and severe floods in Assam,
Role of floods in the making of the floodplain environment and ecology of Assam
- Rejuvenate flood-plain ecosystems
- Floods cause disruption and damage but they also generate a bounty of fish and rejuvenate flood-plain ecosystems all along the Brahmaputra, including in the Kaziranga.
- This landscape has been shaped over millions of years with the help of an active monsoonal environment and mighty rivers that carry sediments weathered from the still-rising Himalaya.
- Over millions of years, this depositing of sediment into the floodplains has produced at least two results: Raising the lowlands and regularly adjusting river beds.
- These ensured that impacts of flooding remained moderate.
- The prosperity and general well-being of a large majority of the population of Assam, especially in rural areas, critically depend on their ability to survive the capricious ways of floods.
- The annual floods were a natural way to enrich the soils, which have a propensity to get depleted.
Adverse impacts
- In many parts of the state, both rural and urban, shoals of water drove people from their homes and forced many of them to seek shelter for their livestock.
- In many places, people failed to save standing crops.
- Granaries were damaged and mud houses were filled with sand brought by the rivers in spate.
- lakhs of people have been affected in recent floods while 1.08 lakh hectares of crops have been damaged.
- Floods can adversely reconfigure the landscape.
- The devastation in the floodplains is also a consequence of the way the dams and reservoirs are operated.
Government’s Steps
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Conclusion Way Forward
- The rapid transformation in rainfall characteristics and flooding patterns demand building people’s resilience.
- Construction projects that impede the movement of water and sediment across the floodplain must be reconsidered.
- The government should plan to install a drainage network linked to pumps to vacuum out stormwater during heavy rain.
- Prediction using rainfall and storm water modelling and transfer of information to citizens and ward level teams should become part of the management system.
- The global concept being tried out is called ‘sponge cities’ where the hard crust of urbanisation is converted into a sponge concept with aquifers, wetlands and lakes being included to detain and retain stormwater and convert foods into a water asset stored for later use.
- Wetlands and local water bodies should be revived in Assam to improve the drainage system, which can act as an exit for excess water and prevent waterlogging.
- This would entail clearing human encroachments in the Brahmaputra flood plains.
- Embankments should be regularly checked for breaches and systems put in place for maintenance; a first step would be to break the babu-contractor nexus that finds floods an easy way to sponge money from the system.
[Q] Critically Analyse the Role of floods in the making of the floodplain environment and ecology of the region.
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