'Flood, Livelihood and Dams in Assam: A human rights issue'

(With a special reference to Dhemaji)

INTRODUCTION:

Floods in Assam have become almost an annual festival. Everybody expects it to happen but

nobody seems to be prepared. The topographical location of Assam is such that it is more or less

like a basin where all the water from the surrounding hills and mountains eventually ends up.

This is a natural phenomenon and it is better if it is recognized as such. The story of the natural

coping mechanism was inherent in the people of the flood inflicted areas. I remember my father

saying how they used to preserve dried vegetables, seeds and legumes for the rainy days. Every

house used to have a raft or a small boat which is repaired as soon as the rainy season

approaches. Only Bao (A special variety of paddy which can grow with the rising water) rice

was cultivated in the flood effected fields. The water used to rise naturally without devastation,

cleaning the ponds and other water bodies as well as the sewerage. The people, already prepared

for the flood had plenty of fishes to eat with their dried vegetables and legumes. This is not a

romanticized picture of the good old days that I am trying to draw; rather it is an attempt to

applaud the coping mechanism, which was continuing for ages. What is important is that people

knew how to live with the floods. The flood water that had brought fertile silt and rejuvenated

the soil and also replenished the water bodies was a necessity people looked forward to it.

However it was not that everything was right with the floods of those times. It had caused

massive erosion in the entire Brahmaputra valley eliminating human settlements, agricultural

fields, tea gardens, and so on. Thus the policy makers came to view it as the main deterrent to the

growth of the state economy. Those were the days when embankments were considered to be the

only permanent solution to the problem of flood- a magic solution to a nagging problem. With

out any public debate on the issue embankments were built almost every where in Assam in the

1950s. Neither was there any proper scientific study of the hydrology of the rivers which were

being blocked. Even people’s common sense, their traditional knowledge of the river systems

was never consulted. Rather embankments were mooted to be the human answer to nature’s

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erratic behavior. And for some years it seemed to be the right decision too. However,

malpractices in building the embankments were rampant and widely reported too. Contemporary

creative literatures besides the newspaper reports are galore with stories of the engineers getting

rich by pillaging funds for embankments.

Embankments led to a false sense of complacency in the minds of the people, eroding the rich

treasure of knowledge about the traditional coping mechanism with flood that the people had

been transferring from one generation to the other. Soon floods returned with rivers changing

courses inundating new areas. Added to that, embankments started to breach and the surging

water caught the people unaware. The response of the government was still more embankments!

Now when water surge in, it would not bring fertile silt with it rather it would lead to sand

deposition. More on this later.

There is another addition to the story line. As mentioned earlier--- Assam is surrounded by hills

on almost all the sides. The main river flowing through the state is the River Brahmaputra which

almost divides the state into two parts viz. north and south. All the rivers flowing down to the

Brahmaputra are its feeder rivers or tributaries. The soil of the entire region being alluvial in

texture, massive deforestation in the hill states releases a lot amount of soil into the rivers which

is deposited in the area where flood water enters. In spite of Supreme Court order in 1995, felling

of trees has not stopped in the hills.

DHEMAJI:

The district of Assam I would like to discuss here in order to illustrate the affects of flood and

dams is Dhemaji, located at the easternmost part of Assam on the North Bank. Previously

Dhemaji was part of the Lakhimpur District with its headquarters in Dibrugarh. In 1971 Dhemaji

was declared as a Sub-Division and the sub division comprised of Jonai and Dhakuakhana.

When the districts of Assam were restructured in 1989, Dhemaji was declared as aseparate

district with Jonai and Dhemaji sub divisions coming under its jurisdiction. Dhakuakhana was

merged with Lakhimpur district. Dhemaji shares its northern border with Arunachal Pradesh and

the Brahmaputra demarcates its southern border. Many rivers and rivulets flow down from the

hills crisscrossing the district and then falls into the Brahmaputra. As the rivers come down from

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the hills they tend to be turbulent and erratic. This area also has had a history of heavy rain

during the summer season.

Source: Official website www.dhemaji.nic.in

The official web site of the district states “…… (The area experiences regular annual floods)

especially after the Great Earthquake of 1950, which left the entire riverine system of the area

severely disturbed. During the months of May to September with the onset of South East

monsoon rains, huge volumes of floodwater starts spilling all along the 720 Km. length of

embankments of the River Brahmaputra in Assam, out of which 132 Km. are within the

jurisdiction of Dhemaji E & D Division. The intensity of floods can well be imagined during the

months when the waters of the Brahmaputra synchronize with that of the other tributaries.” i The

web site also states that it has been very tough to properly name the rivers of the district. And

among the various causes it gives ‘frequent and rapid change of river courses’ as the first cause.

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It also mentions about the ‘very complicated and inhospitable riverine areas’ of the district. The

erstwhile Embankment&Drainage (E&D) department(now the Flood Control Department) has

listed the names of 20 rivers and also adds ‘Other small tribulets’ at the end of the list.

EMBANKMENTS

The following is the list of embankments in the district. The schemes are of the District Flood

Control Department:

Name of embankmentsLength

(in km)Year of construction

1. Dhakuakhana-Korha bund 19.00 1952-53

2. Tenga-am-Ghilamara bund on L/B of Sampara 13.50 1952-53

3. Deorighat-Sissikalghar bund of Brahmaputra 27.15 1954-55

4. Rly. Line Gohaingaon bund on North bank of

Kumotiya

7.59 1954-55

5. Rly line bund from L/S of Jiyadhal embkt to

Tinigharia

6.23 1954-55

6. Sissikalghar bund from Moridhal to Charikaria 29.29 1954-55

7. Dizmore-Sonarigaon bund from Brahmaputra

embkt.

23.18 1955-56

8. Sissikalghar-Tekeliphuta bund from Brahmaputra

embkt.

27.15 1955-56

9. Boginadi-Gogamukh bund  from Subansiri embkt. 2.50 1957-58

10. Subansiri-Samparaghat-Jengraimukh bund 10.00 1962-634

11. Gainadi upstream bund 3.30 1963-64

12. Gogamukh-Samparaghat bund from subansiri 32.50 1965-66

13. Jengraimukh-Selamukh bund from Subansiri 6.75 1967-68

14. Baan Pratirodh Jiyadhal bund 5.12 1975-76

15. Baruati bund from upstream of Gainadi 6.60 1975-76

16. Rly bund from upstream of Gainadi 7.00 1975-76

17. Gurorthali bund on the North Bank of Kumotiya. 3.00 1978-79

18. Sampara PWD road bund 3.65 1978-79

19. Rly line Nilakh bund from upstream of Gainadi 3.00 1978-79

20. Bahir Silley bund (Part-I) from Leku CPWD

bridge.

5.05 1984-85

21. Tinigharia bund (Part-I) from Jiyadhal embkt 5.00 1984-85

22. Bahir Silley bund (Part-II) from Leku CPWD

bridge.

3.05 1987-88

 

The list says that the history of constructing embankments in the district started in the year 1952

and the maximum numbers of embankments i.e. 9 of them were built in the decade of 1950s out

of which 4 came up in 1954-55. Out of the 22 embankments 4 were built for the protection of the

Railway lines. The whole process of building embankments stopped after 1988. According to the

official data the total length of embankment is 249.61km in the district.

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The technocrats agree that the life span of an embankment is around 30 years, if built in the

proper prescribed manner. However, with the amount of corruption in the system, it will be

imprudent to expect much of integrity in the construction of embankments too. And even if we

accept theoretically that the construction was complete according to the book, the embankments

still has a lifespan of thirty years. Accordingly, the embankments which were constructed in the

1950s must have started become vulnerable by the 1980s. And surprisingly the construction of

new embankments stopped by 1988, for which no official explanation is available.

As indicated, embankments create drastic change in the natural silt deposition process of a river.

The flood water of a river which naturally spills on its banks without obstacles spreads the silt in

an even manner, thus the river bed remains more or less same. It is generally recognized that it is

natural for a river to spread sediment and water and then drain it afterwards. In fact, deltas are

formed in that way. On the other hand ‘(E)mbankment technology is based on water levels; it

does not take note of the role of sediment trapped within the walls-whose annual average load is

enough for 1m x 1m cross section bund to circle the equator thrice.’iiThis argument is supported

by the ground reality. For example, in the village of Atkai Naharani near Sripani, situated nearly

25kms north of the district headquarters, there is a railway bund in the Gai river which was

constructed way back in 1975-76. The people in the locality narrate that the bund had breached

in the very year it had been built. However it was repaired then. Silt has been depositing on the

river bed for the last thirty years in such a way that when one looks at the railway bridge which is

hardly one kilometer away from the bund, one can see that there is hardly any space between the

bed and the bridge through which the water can flow. Consequently in July 2007 the original

weak link on the bund suddenly breached and river changed its course rendering hundreds of

people totally homeless. The people got government relief only for 9 days whereas they were

staying in makeshift tents erected on the embankment till the month of December. It took a lot of

advocacy on the part of the activists and even this writer to convince the administration about the

gravity of the situation. After a long and arduous negotiation the embankment was repaired,

i

? www.dhemaji.nic.in

ii Interview with Dr. D. K. Mishra an IIT civil engineer who had published a book on the mismanagement of floods in Bihar, by Chitra Padmanabhan published in The Hindu on 19/09/08 pg 11.

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albeit very badly, and thankfully the flood water did not create trouble in that area this time.

However it broke the embankment almost half a kilometer ahead of that area.

“At least eight people, including four of a family, were washed away and Assam-Arunachal

Pradesh surface links disrupted by flash floods in Assam’s Dhemaji district today (15th August

2011).The eight were washed away at Sisibargaon by swollen waters of Gainadi, a major

tributary of Brahmaputra river, following torrential rains in its upper reaches of Arunachal

Pradesh, official sources saidiii. But the the embankment was breached in a different spot

altogether, as the original tract had suffered severe silt deposition.

And the story repeats…

SILT DEPOSITION

On account of the very turbulent nature of its rivers and the alluvial texture of soil the

sedimentation rate is very high in the district (which is also true in case of other districts of

Assam). It is mentionable that it is mostly the rivers coming down from Arunachal Pradesh

which affects the sand deposit in the water. Arunachal Pradesh has a notorious history of

denuding the mountains. The Supreme Court had banned the felling of trees in the hills way back

in 1995, but a cursory glance at the hills is sufficient to make one realize that the ban had been

gleefully flaunted and there had been no state intervention to prevent it. As a result, tons of silt

comes down every year from the hills with river water rendering miles and miles of cultivable

land into vast reserve of sand year after year. On the National Highway 52, just after few

kilometers of entering the Dhemaji district, one can easily see the remnants of some concrete

houses protruding from the sand filled land. That is not a rare sight, but the sight is really

appalling. The people of the district, who are almost absolutely dependent on the traditional crop,

now have not been able to work out what to do with the sand that buried their fields. The state

agriculture department once supplied some seeds supposedly compatible with sand-filled land

but it did not yield anything. And those people, who had lost all land to the new streams of

rivers, had no option but to cook the seeds and eat. This situation has forced local people to

migrate to the towns and cities in search of livelihood. A large number of youths of the district

have migrated even out of the state.

iii http://www.newsreporter.in/8-washed-away-in-assam-flash-floods viewed on 31/08/20117

The story of silt deposition, which is common in all the districts of Assam, has another layer to

it in the district of Dhemaji. This district, in spite of being the most underdeveloped district of

the state can still boast of two massive ongoing development projects. One is the controversial

Lower Subansiri Hydro Power Project and other is the much touted Bogibeel Bridge linking the

Dibrugarh district with Dhemaji. The Assamese middle class regards these two as synonymous

to development. The flip side of the story is that for the construction of these two massive

‘development’ projects a huge cache of boulders is necessary. NHPCiv, the company responsible

for the construction of the Lower Subansiri Hydro Power project has not yet declared the exact

amount of boulders that is required for the project. But for the construction of the Bogibeel

Bridge it is said that1.7 million cubic meters of boulders will be needed, of which 0.8 million can

be supplied by the stone quarries in the Southern Upper Assam area and the rest will have to

come from somewhere else. Till now near about 0.4 million cubic meters has been mined from

the rivers of Dhemaji district. The boulders have been stacked near the construction site and the

view is appalling. One can see only stacks of boulders till visibility permits. It is hard to imagine

that those were paddy fields once upon a time. The boulders which had been picked up from the

river bed leave the bed naked and vulnerable. Thus, when the flood water surges down the sands

from the river bed can freely flow with it. When I visited the upper reach of the Gai river in

February 2008 we could see the mining still continuing. As Prafulla Gogoiv says, “Few years

back the force of the water was not so vigorous. But now we know that when it rains in the hills

the water will come surging down within half an hour. The way the forest has been cut down and

the boulders have been extracted from the river bed there is nothing to work as a restrain on the

force of the water. As a result the sand deposition has increased manifold.”

Loss of livelihood:

Agriculture and animal husbandry constitute the traditional economic life of the people of

Dhemaji. It has been a consumption-oriented, subsistence economy. Commercialization has been

at a very low stage of development. The people of the district are basically mono-croppers. They

practice paddy cultivation. Some of them also practice Rabi crop cultivation (mustard, potato,

etc.). It should be noted that the people had always co-existed with flood water. But as already

iv National Hydro Power Project now known only as NHPC

v Interview with Prafulla Gogoi an activist of Sripani area of Dhemaji district on 24/10/20078

mentioned the traditional crops that could withstand floods are fast disappearing adding to the

woes of the people. Besides, the nature of flood today is rapidly changing as well.

Floods have rendered many people homeless and have robbed them of their livelihood too.

Because of the silt deposition the fields are left useless. During our visit to the district in

February 2008 Prafulla Gogoi showed us a vast fallow area near the railway bridge of Gai River

which was once a paddy field. He said that the flood of 1998 deposited so much of sand on that

area that it has turned uncultivable now. Such examples abound everywhere in the district.

As a result massive migration has taken place. For example, after the floods of 2007, on one

single day around 500 young men left Simenmukh for the coal mines of Meghalaya. An

impressive number of people had left for the various towns of Assam, including Dhemaji in

search of livelihood. Keshab Krishna Chatradharavi (Bhai) said, “If you go to the towns like

Dibrugarh you will find that the rickshaw pullers are mostly from Dhemaji and Lakhimpur.

Many people had even sent their young children to work as domestic help to Guwahati and other

towns.” Gokul Hajongvii added, “You would find no young man in our village and the other

villages nearby. They have migrated to all over India in search of livelihood.”

On my visit to Prafulla Gogoi’s village Aktai Naharani in February 2008, I could see that not a

single field was being cultivated and the land was dazzling with sand for miles. The ladies rued

the fact that they had no work in hand. Some of the men were out to work as daily wage

labourers in the house of the few fortunate families who were spared the wrath of the floods.

However they got only 30 rupees for a whole days work. And some of them gather firewood by

either cutting the dead trees or even the remnant of their thatched houses which was spared by

the raging flood. They take the firewood to the market in Simenmukh on bicycles. One bicycle

fetches Rs.60 and one person can take only one bicycle to the market in one day. The cost of the

commodities being too high, most of the time they go hungry. This is the common story of all the

flood affected area of the district with very nominal variation. The nature and magnitude of loss

of livelihood in the district has never caught the attention of the government. Whenever the issue

vi Interview with Keshab Krishna Chatradhara an activist of the People’s Movement for Subansiri and Brahmaputra Valley an organization based in Gogamukh fighting against the Subansiri Dam on 24/10/07

vii Interview with Gokul Hajong an activist with Bhumiputra Bhumi Adhikar Samity of Simenmukh , who is fighting for the land rights of the people on 22/10/07.

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of loss of livelihood as a fall out of flood is discussed, it is always in terms of hectares of land,

such quantification barely expresses the real loss faced by the people and its long term

implication.

DAMS AND FLOOD:

As if floods and embankments were not enough trouble for the district the government had

decided to construct the 2000 Watt mega Lower Subansiri Hydro Power Project touting it to be

the solution to the problem of flood. It is purportedly the biggest ever dam constructed in India.

And now the Indian Government has decided to build 169 mega dams in the rivers of Arunachal

Pradesh. And those rivers flow down Assam.

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Worldwide Dams are generally designed on the basis of a very poor knowledge about the long-

term hydrology of the rivers they block. It is well known that due to construction of dams the

river system stands fragmented and this way of manually controlling the river has potential

impacts on the ecology of rivers - including disruption of animals' migration up and downstream,

an impact that has been linked to the extinction of species of freshwater fish and so on. The basic

purpose of all mega dams is both power generation and flood control. The Lower Subansiri

Hydro Power Project has also promised to reduce floods.”Subansiri Lower Project (sic) will help

in reduction in flood hazards and erosion intensity in the river basin thus minimizing the loss of

forest cover and cultivable land due to flood that devastates the State of Assam almost every

year. 12% free power would be given to Arunachal Pradesh, which in turn would add to the

revenue of the State.”viii Remarkably except flood control Assam gets nothing, not even 1% of

electricity whereas the maximum impact on the biodiversity will be borne by Assam. But

contemporary history is witness to the fact that, while areas upstream of dams are flooded to

create reservoirs, wetlands downstream can dry out and the fertility of floodplain soil can

decline.

Experiences round the world in recent years have revealed an, largely unexpected to many,

menace from large dams. Though most are built with the promise that they will reduce flood

downstream, many have had the reverse effect. This is most conspicuous during times of heavy

rains, when reservoirs become swollen.

Here are some examples from India:

In August 2000 monsoon floods in Andhra Pradesh cracked the Roxsagar dam near the

state capital Hyderabad. Thousands of workers rushed to mend the breach, but were

forced to retreat as water gushed towards the capital. Nearly 40,000 people were

evacuated from their flooded homes.

viii Aiming towards sustainable hydropower development:strategic environmental and social preparedness for 2000 mw Subansiri Lower Project in india: Joint paper by Ramesh Chandra Executive Director (Projects) NHPC, Faridabad, India ;A K Tripathi Manager (Environment) NHPC, Faridabad, India and Devjani Patra Environment Officer NHPC, Faridabad, India. Pg 10.

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India's worst dam failure occurred in 1979, the Machu II dam in Gujarat unleashed

floodwaters in which 2000 people died.

Heavy monsoon rains in the rivers of West Bengal in western India filled reservoirs of

Damodar Valley Corporation Dams and it reached the bursting point during September

2000. Therefore emergency release of water from several dams had to be resorted to,

creating water surges into four rivers: the Damodar, Barakar, Mayurakshi and Ajoy. The

floodwaters surged on into the giant river delta system that covers much of both West

Bengal and neighbouring Bangladesh. It resulted in a disaster of such magnitude that it

left more than a thousand dead, washed away a million of homes and, according to initial

government estimates, damaged property worth more than £40 million.

The Ukai dam was constructed in 1970 and its catchments area is in Maharastra. This is

the only dam on the river Tapti. But after 28 years of construction due to heavy rainfall

6.73 lakh cusecs of water had to be released in1998. A massive destruction was viewed

by the people downstream, taking more than 2000 lives and Surat witnessed flash flood

with devastating effect. Surat is 2000Km away from the dam site and the water took 6

hours to reach the city.

In 2008 worst disaster was the Kosi flood in Bihar which occurred due to the

unprecedented release of water in Nepal from the over flooding dam.

In Assam, due to heavy rainfall in the catchment areas of the River Ranganadi in the

evening of 13th June 2008, the inflow of water in the River increased to the tune of

approx. 428 Cumec at 2.45 AM on 14/06/08 and to approximately 2120 Cumec at 5.10

AM. The huge inflow (i.e. flash flood) could not be stored in the small reservoir (5.7 M

Cum capacity) therefore, allowed to pass downstream through the spillway meant for this

purpose and also for the safety of small dam. It resulted in unprecedented inundation of

the town of Lakhimpur and related man- made disaster. The same disaster is repeated

every year. This year in mid-July “A total of 2,11,410 people in 197 villages have been

severely affected by floods in the Subansiri, Drupang, Ranganadi rivers and other

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tributaries of the Brahmaputra following heavy downpour in the hills of neighbouring

Arunachal Pradesh.”ix 

All the above examples consolidate the findings of scientific writer Fred Pearce, who says “lack

of adequate information means that dams are often built without adequate spillways to cope with

extreme floods”. During a 1995 study of 25 Indian dams, World Bank engineers calculated the

amount of water that the dams should have been able to release at the height of a flood. In each

case, they found the expected floods were greater than those that the dams had been built to

discharge over their spillways.

Another impact of dams is that they retain sediment that would normally be carried downstream

by rivers. The soil of the northeastern region being alluvial, the sedimentation level of the rivers

is also very high. Therefore, there is ample possibility of the dam being defunct after some years

due to sand deposition. Even the Naphta Jakhri project in Himachal Pradesh is being shut down

during the monsoon because the silt load is very high. And the average annual sediment yield (of

Subansiri River) at Chauldhoaghat is 94.83 X 103 m tonnes (WAPCOS 1993). Hence the impact

can be easily foreseen.

This is only one aspect of the ill effects of mega dams. As Keshab Krishna Chatradhara the

Secretary of Peoples Movement for Subansiri Brahmaputra Valley (PMSBV) asserts, “The big

dam structure is not suitable for the entire northeast because of its higher seismicity, unique

biodiversity asset, climate change impacts, impact on indigenous peoples and their lands”x.

Thus, with the big dams coming, another hazard, may be the most serious of them all, looms

large on the people of this god’s forgotten district. This imminent disaster is well anticipated by

the people. It is for the policy makers to realize this and devise policies accordingly. Flood

situation has taken a different turn with too much of human intervention. The least that the

government can do is to dissuade themselves from taking too much of technocratic decisions,

neglecting the huge treasure of human knowledge derived out of years of experience. Till then

ix The Hindu, 20th July 201113

solution to flood problem will probably remain limited only to emergency disaster management.  

Note: An earlier version of the paper has been published in the commemorative volume of the

29th conference of the North East India History Association on 6-8th November, 2008 in

Dibrugarh University.

x Interview with Mr. Chatradhara an activist of the People’s Movement for Subansiri and Brahmaputra Valley an organization based in Gogamukh fighting against the Subansiri Dam on 24/10/07

SHASHWATI GOSWAMI

Associate Professor

Indian Institute of Mass Communication

New Delhi

Email: shashwati.goswami@gmail.com

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