Run, rebuild, repeat as floods eat away at India’s indigenous land
Hemram Pegu has been forced to rebuild his home at least eight times in the past decade, shifting it a few meters inland every time heavy rains cause the Brahmaputra River to surge into his village of Besemora, in northeast India.
As a member of the indigenous Mising tribe, who have lived along the Brahmaputra and its tributaries for generations, Pegu remembers taking pride in being able to interpret the behavior of one of the Earth’s longest river systems.
But today, he said, the community is baffled by its unpredictable nature.
“The original site of our village is now history,” Pegu said of his home on Majuli, a riverine island in Assam state.
“Its location continues to change as we keep moving inland by 200 to 300 meters from the advancing river each time it floods,” the 52-year-old shopkeeper told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
With limited work options and a high dependence on natural resources, the Mising – like other indigenous communities around the world – often suffer the worst of the extreme weather that has become increasingly common as global temperatures rise.
The swelling Brahmaputra frequently uproots families in Besemora, compelling them to relocate to a shrinking area of available land and putting a strain on their livelihoods.
Scientist Partha Jyoti Das pointed to climate warming as a major reason for the intensified flooding, adding it had caused “significant deviations” in natural weather patterns over Assam in the past decade.
A study published by India’s Department of Science and Technology in 2018 found that Assam was the most vulnerable of the Indian Himalayan states to destructive climate change effects.
It highlighted a range of factors, including Assam’s low per-capita income, rates of crop insurance, and land under irrigation, leaving farmers to rely on regular rainfall to water their fields.
Dying fish, sandy pots
Between 2014 and 2021, more than 32 million people in Assam were affected by flooding, including nearly 660 deaths, according to data from the state disaster management authority.
In an effort to minimize the destruction, Besemora residents raise the floors of their traditional stilted bamboo homes depending on the level of the latest flood, Pegu explained.
The villagers also try to break up the force of the flooding with a network of bamboo “porcupines,” triangular structures made of intersecting poles built along the riverbanks.
But those measures are often no match for the overpowering water.
When that happens, said Binud Doley, an elder from Salmora village, about a kilometer north of Besemora, the area’s indigenous communities face yet another problem: the inability to reclaim their land once the flood waters have receded.
With no title deeds to prove ownership, the Mising traditionally settle on unused riparian land, Doley said.
But the effects of flooding and riverbank erosion, along with the spread of farming and the region’s growing population, mean available land is becoming scarce, he added.
Gojen Paw from Majdolopa village, in Assam state, said abrupt climate swings are also destroying the farming and fishing the Mising people depend on.
Historically, Assam has often experienced some flooding during the annual monsoon season, Paw said, with the waters leaving behind nutrient-rich alluvial deposits that would naturally fertilize its fields of rice, mustard and vegetables.
But these days, “frequent floods erode away the fertile topsoil from our fields and leave behind coarse sand, debris, and rounded pebbles,” he said.
Villagers say fish populations are decreasing as the bloated river and crumbling riverbanks disturb their habitats, and even the centuries-old Mising tradition of handmade pottery is under threat.
Long-term solutions
After heavy flooding, the government steps in to help villagers like Chamuah get back on their feet, said Sisuram Bharali, president of the gram panchayat of Bongaigaon, the village-level governing agency that oversees Salmora.
Some families are offered daily wage work, if capable, with pay of up to 347 rupees ($4.65), he noted, while others might receive 10 kilogram of rice per month for a limited period.
The Assam government notes on its water resources website that it has been raising and strengthening embankments, building flood walls and improving village drainage, helping protect more than half the state’s flood-prone areas.
But it emphasizes that “no long-term measures have been implemented so far to mitigate the flood and erosion problems.”
Such long-term fixes are essential, said Tuhin K. Das, an expert on disasters and migration and former chair professor of the Planning and Development Unit at Jadavpur University.
To deal with the climate-induced displacement of indigenous communities, who make up nearly 9 percent of India’s population, the government should create policies to rehouse them, restore their livelihoods and offer job training, Das said.
Authorities also need to tackle the lasting consequences of flooding on living conditions, health and education, he added.
“The long-term socioeconomic impacts of riverbank erosion are rarely assessed from a policy perspective,” he said.
Besemora residents can only make sure they always have essentials bundled together on their roofs, ready to grab when the river bursts its banks again, said Purnima Doley.
“We have no choice but to flee our homes with these meager belongings to safer, higher ground, when this otherwise serene river swells up,” said Doley.
A man casts a net to fish in the Brahmaputra River at sunset in Guwahati, India on May 25, 2021.Photo: AFP
