In Assam, floods shift course. State response is static

The Brahmaputra Board has long been hampered by staff shortages and inadequate technical capacity. With extreme weather becoming more frequent, the Centre and state governments need to reinvigorate the agency

Flooding is a chronic feature of Assam’s monsoon. This year, however, parts of the state far removed from the banks of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries have borne the brunt of the raging waters. According to the state government, the scale of devastation in the Upper Assam districts of Sivasagar, Charaideo, Jorhat and Golaghat is “unprecedented”. More than 20 people lost their lives within 24 hours on Monday after a wall of water from Nagaland’s Mon district spilled into Assam and surged over embankments. It is now draining into the Brahmaputra over open terrain rather than just through the tributaries. The Assam government has reportedly told the state assembly that “no one could have been prepared” for the calamity. That isn’t a convincing explanation. The trajectory of the floods over the past few days is a fallout of Assam’s topography and the Brahmaputra’s well-known tendency to shift course. At a time when climate change is amplifying natural vulnerabilities, the authorities need to be more vigilant to minimise suffering.

After emerging from the mountains near Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh’s East Siang district, the Brahmaputra enters the relatively flat Assam valley. The sharp reduction in gradient causes the river to slow down and deposit sediment. Over time, this has raised the riverbed, reducing the channel’s capacity to contain floodwaters. The result is that Upper Assam is increasingly exposed to flood risks once associated primarily with downstream areas. The Brahmaputra also periodically abandons old channels and carves out new ones, making it impossible to confine the river within embankments permanently. Yet Assam’s flood management strategy continues to rely on this approach.

On Sunday, Mon district received more than a third of its average July rainfall in about eight hours. With hills in the region already saturated with water from heavy rains earlier this month, slopes collapsed, triggering landslides that killed nine people in Nagaland. The destruction that followed in Assam underscores the need for an institutional mechanism that treats rivers as shared ecological systems and ensures timely warning and coordinated action across states. The Brahmaputra Board has long been hampered by staff shortages and inadequate technical capacity. With extreme weather becoming more frequent, the Centre and state governments need to reinvigorate the agency.