 In Assam, the flood situation remains grim. The state of northeastern India has experienced two waves of floods in the past two months which has led to the displacement of lax of people and hundreds of deaths. Today, I am joined by Dr. Mirza Zulfika Rahman, an independent researcher based in Guwahati, to discuss the issue. Dr. Mirza holds a research specialization on border studies in northeastern India and trans-boundary water sharing and management issues between China, India and Bangladesh. Thank you for joining us, sir. Assam has traditionally been prone to floods. Could you explain the reason for this phenomenon and tell its history? When we talk about Assam, it is then, and we also talk about the history of Assam. Assam was quite a large area as you know historically and from there several states came up in northeastern India. If we talk about a larger region, this larger region has always been a rain abundant region and always have been prone to floods because of the geomorphology of the river Bhuputra. And especially after the 1950 earthquake, when the riverbed constantly went up, the river became less able to carry the water flow that was there in the monsoon season and therefore used to frequently flood the banks. So in that course of that, immediately after the 1950 earthquake, there was the need for building a lot of embankments along the river Bhuputra in order to protect important oil towns and tea gardens growing towns and other commercial establishments in and around major towns of Assam. And those embankments that were built over time and across these decades, the several decades have also quite a lot in terms of amplified flood in many ways. And that in combination with climate sense events with different varying rainfall patterns across time, especially in the past few years that we have seen, in combination with the infrastructure that we have laid on the ground such as embankments has actually created the floods in Assam. So in that sense, flood has traditionally been welcomed by the people when these embankments were not there, when people used to dance below when floods used to arrive, because floods used to mean that the fertile silt would actually come and be deposited on the lands, which would actually enable them to have a good harvest. But after a point of time when these embankments started building in a different manner, because after the 1950 earthquake, it was India was just getting independent and there was not enough time and resources to devote to mapping the flood plain properly. And without doing that properly, there was a lot of embankments which were there to protect for short term measures. And that actually over and over the decades have been layered up to such an extent that now we are seeing such a high intensity of floods in the region. While the years between 2016 and 2020 have all been flood filled, except for 2018, what went wrong on the policy level in all these years that caused people to suffer so much? So the conversation around floods in Assam, particularly, has always been revolved around the flood season first. And also the attitude of only providing rescue and relief. And that has been the dominant narrative and building embankments whenever there is a flood prone area, you build the embankment. So these are very structural measures, physical infrastructure that is built by the government and are very, very structural measures. And there has been, traditionally, over investment by the government on structural measures through mitigate floods. And that also needs to be accompanied by non-structural measures which relate to more other non-structural flood mitigation techniques and also a consultation and a conversation with the communities who live along the river and to be able to tap into the traditional knowledge systems where communities have been living with floods for generations. And the inability to do that at the policy level has also accentuated the impact of the floods in recent years. And also, given the fact that climate since even the rainfall patterns have been quite accumulated within a short period of time, and in addition to the infrastructure on the ground, is actually creating much more destruction on the ground. We can see this coming. And year on year, the intensity of the floods have been increasing. But the point is to actually take a step back, not only concentrate on only providing relief and rescue, but also try to actually bring out alternative non-structural flood mitigation measures, which are not only limited to Assam, but on a transboundary level. The solution for floods, again, cannot be found overnight, just as the reasons for the floods have not been treated overnight. It has taken decades to, for the region of this flood to be more intense. Therefore, the solution for the floods also will also take much more time. It will never happen overnight. But the conversation has to start. The conversation to my mind has not started as yet. We have to also see how different regions around the world have hoped with such kind of floods, especially in the Mekong Delta and also maybe in Bangladesh, for example, in downstream of the river, and also said as practices of mitigation measures. And so that we can actually be able to come up to terms in the next cycle of floods. And the conversation around floods does not only have to happen during the flood season. It has to be a year-long conversation. In the non-flood season also, we have to continuously speak about how to actually tackle the next floods. That has to be there. That I think will distribute there. Exactly. In this context only, Assam is a border state. How does this factor come into play when we talk about floods in the state? See, coming back to the point that I made earlier, that we should not see the floods as contained within the territory of Assam only. Assam is just one state of North East India. And there are so many linked kind of factors across North East India and not only North East India, but also Bhutan, China, and Bangladesh. All of this humiliatively form the crux of the larger bio region. If you look at the larger geographical region, that kind of lens should be applied in order to find mitigations and solutions to floods. We cannot have this narrow minded view of only Assam to be seen because a lot of the solutions that needs to be applied in order to tackle floods has to be given at the river basin level and not at the territorial level of provinces within the Indian nation state. Bhutan has to be brought into the focus. China has to be brought into what is happening in China that also has to be factored in. And what is also happening in downstream Bangladesh? How are measures taken in India are affecting downstream in Bangladesh? All of this cooperative kind of a regional approach, a cooperative regional approach is the way forward in order to find lasting solutions towards floods because climate risk can climate change. All of this and huge calamitous events such as floods are going to be the norm in the future and if we do not have a regional approach, a regional solidarity, we will not be able to find solutions. Correct, keeping the rapid climate change in mind, what are the three long term decisions you think the state government and other stakeholders must make as soon as possible to prevent this crisis from happening repeatedly? Yeah, so the first is that the realisation that these solutions would need to be balanced between structural and non-structural measures and bring that effectively into policy and also provide effective on-ground training to a lot of the officials and administration which is involved in such flood mitigation measures. As of now, most of the measures are mostly targeted at relief and rescue and which needs to be broadened and for that to happen, we need a lot of training to be imparted to district administration and also across sharing of best practices, even within the region. For example, what recently happened in Karcher, how the district administration were able to enable to provide a response to that floods has to be a lesson shared with different district administrations within Assam and also with other states of North East India and also, for example, what happened in half-long last one. So in that sense, a lot of this cumulative understanding would then bring about some sort of a change in attitudes towards how we actually can confront floods and also we need to kind of bring in at a policy level that a lot of infrastructural changes that we have seen in the past few years has also led to several landslides, the intensity of landslides happening in North East India quite often and that being accompanied by floods can be very destructive to communities. So that needs to be factored in and also seeing that the economic connectivity that we are trying to push through at a rapid pace should not disrupt the ecological connectivity of the region because if that ecological connectivity is disrupted at this pace, then the economic connectivity will also get affected at some point of time and we can see the economic loss because of these floods every year has been quite huge. It is not just enough to only rebuild but also it is important to reassess and then build sustainability. That is important and at the end I would like to mention there is the traditional knowledge systems of communities. For example, I will give you the example of half-long last month when the very kilometers flood actually occurred in half-long. It is seen that a lot of the aspects that were done on the ground were not consulted properly with the communities. So in that sense we need modern science to actually engage with traditional world views and alternative community and other systems in order to be able to bring together the best of both to be able to mitigate floods, to be able to go forward, to be able to see that how we can actually tackle this in the coming years. Okay, thank you sir. Thank you so much for joining Dr. Mirja. If you like our work, please subscribe to newsclick.in for more. Thanks for watching.