Floods in Assam :Learning from deluge

In Context 

This year’s floods in Assam have been merciless. 

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. 

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.