When it comes to floods in Assam, I refrain from using the term unprecedented. In media reporting on disasters, sensationalism often becomes the norm. The task is to generate curiosity. This is, of course, a structural limitation of event-based reporting. Assam’s floods, however, need a deeper contextual understanding.

Unprecedented compared to what?

If I kept using the term unprecedented for every major flood in Assam, I would be using it quite often. Unprecedented floods arrive every few years. In the last few decades, unprecedented has become remarkably common. Intensified flooding is the new normal in Assam, in a state where flooding is a reality considering its topography. 

The 2026 floods have now killed at least 75 people, and displaced roughly 700,000, with nearly 300,000 people living in relief camps and over 900 villages submerged across districts such as Sivasagar, Charaideo, Dibrugarh, Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Majuli, and Darrang. The 2025 floods had affected over 6.3 lakh people and claimed the lives of at least 26 people as per conservative estimates. Annual devastation has become routine. 

However, there is nothing natural about the intensity of the destruction we witness today. Modern-day floods in Assam are manufactured. 

The embankment nexus

Assam’s primary response to flooding has been the construction of embankments, now totalling nearly 4,800 km. Every year, there is construction or repair of these embankments. 

These embankments, often doubling up as roads, are temporary measures to control floods. When breached, the intensity of flooding and destruction increases several fold. Data reveals that breaches of embankments are an annual affair in Assam. The water resources minister recently informed that over 60 percent of the embankments need reconstruction or repair and another 1,000 km is being built. 

Several pieces have highlighted how the destruction we see in 2026 was largely preventable and that the intensity of flooding has been largely due to the results of human actions. It has also been established that urban flooding largely results from unplanned growth and encroachment of wetlands to construct large infrastructure projects and inadequate drainage management. 

As per the Assam government’s own admission, no long term measures have been implemented so far to mitigate the flood and erosion problems of the state. 

The obvious question then emerges: despite overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating the limitations of embankments, why does the government remain so committed to this approach? Why is Assam, or for that matter all the north eastern states, insistent on consistently pursuing a development model that is not suited for the topography? 

The answer lies in the political economy of disasters.

Over the last six decades, Assam has spent close to Rs 30,000 crore on embankments, with nearly Rs 1,500 crore spent in a recent three-year period. These constructions have had limited impact in reducing floods. In fact, a preliminary research based on government reports highlights that the destruction has consistently increased over the years. 

The construction economy benefits a large number of contractors, thereby creating a nexus. Large scale destruction and misery of many becomes a consistent source of wealth accumulation for a few. The majority of embankments and other flood-related constructions are funded by international financial institutions  such as ADB or the World Bank through loans, thereby increasing state debt. 

A 2017 CAG audit report in 2017 had highlighted that measures like undue financial aid to contractors, non-adoption of schedule of rates had led to loss of revenue and excess payment, among other irregularities like inadequate hydrological and morphological studies before implementing projects. 

Thus, it is evident that the current flood management plan bleeds state resources both through embankment constructions and in means of providing relief, compensation and rehabilitation to those impacted. Structural measures to tackle floods and develop sustainable solutions would deeply impact this source of constant income for many. 

The limitations of relief economy

Social media is once again filled with donation drives. Funds are being raised to provide relief to those affected. Every year, civil society and community-based organisations raise millions to provide relief, and many of them do important work. 

But relief operations, while important, offer no lasting solutions. However noble they may be, they only address the symptoms, and sometimes take the focus away from the structural discussion.

With the advent of social media, there is now a performative culture around relief about who can collect and distribute more. ‘Volunteers’ with little understanding of how relief operations should be conducted, often create additional challenges for communities and government agencies, who are forced to clean up the relief litter, often in terms of single use plastic and supply of substandard clothes and food packets that strip the victims of dignity. 

The spectacle serves a purpose. The Assam CM and ministers regularly tweet out pictures of those donating, with cheques. Elected representatives make sure to amplify their limited donations before the public. And officials are either coerced to donate a day of their earnings to the flood relief fund. 

Yet there is little discussion on the accountability of these funds or questions about the structural reasons behind increased flood-related destructions. Public opinion is generally geared towards not “politicising” a disaster. Those who question the structural causes of flooding are frequently dismissed as being insensitive or as lacking empathy and solidarity. For instance, singer Nilotpal Bora recently alleged that he was being targeted for raising questions on accountability of the CM relief fund. 

Relief is distributed to affected victims either in their camps or destroyed homelands. It assumes that people would return back to their homes once the water recedes. However, it is often not the case for victims of erosion. Often the victims of floods are indigenous communities, char dwelling communities and the rural poor. With erosion, entire villages disappear and many of them continue living in camps or settle in ‘forest lands’ with nearly no government support or amenities. Communities are clubbed together as ‘flood affected’ with no coherent policy response and that becomes a major impediment to permanent resettlement. 

Structural crises need structural solutions

Floods, like everything else, are political. Politics define the lens of planning, implementation and reaction to floods. 

It has been well established that the extractive, infrastructure-heavy development model being pursued across the Northeast is incompatible with the region's fragile ecology and will only intensify floods and climate disasters. Yet dissent against these projects is routinely suppressed, and activists protesting them are criminalised or imprisoned. With steady erosion of  agricultural land, long term damage is inflicted on the rural economy. We now find communities, increasingly moving towards cities in other parts of India to work as wage labour. 

Prevention, preparation and adaptation need to become the organising principles of flood governance. Assam cannot continue its model of one size fits all of building and repairing embankments as a response towards floods. 

Various communities across Assam have lived with floods for generations and have developed resilient ways of adapting to river systems. These experiences need to be complemented by scientific knowledge. Impacted communities should have a seat at the table when flood management plans are prepared. A redistribution of decision making power away from contractor-political nexus that profits from engineered vulnerability and more towards impacted communities, char dwellers, rural poor and floodplain farmers should become the key. 

Every monsoon, Assam briefly remembers floods, much like Delhi remembers air pollution every winter. This year, much of the national media's attention has been captured by ongoing student protests, leaving Assam’s floods with relatively little coverage. 

In less than a month, the floodwaters will recede, relief camps will close, media attention will move elsewhere, and the annual cycle of forgetting will begin again.

Until the next “unprecedented” flood.

Manoranjan Pegu writes on the issues of tribes, labour and nationalism. He has a PhD in sociology. Views expressed are personal.

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