Living with the river: Rethinking Assam’s flood resilience

By Dr Jayant Kumar*  

Assam’s recurring floods raise a question beyond flood control: How can we make people, infrastructure and livelihoods less vulnerable when the flood inevitably comes?

After more than four and a half decades working with disaster-affected communities, I have learnt that disasters become devastating when several systems fail together.

Some ideas deserve consideration:

Treat Floods As A Systemic Stress Test 

Simulate simultaneous failure of roads, electricity, mobile networks, health services and fuel supplies. This can expose vulnerabilities that conventional preparedness plans may miss.

Create A 72-hour Resilience Window

When forecasts indicate a severe flood, predetermined actions should begin—securing supplies, repositioning equipment, contacting vulnerable households and activating alternative access. The shift should be from forecasting to pre-positioning.

Protect Critical Infrastructure

Identify health centres, water systems, communication towers, electricity installations and key roads that must continue functioning, and develop continuity arrangements for them.

Give Communities Assets, Not Only Responsibilities

Locally managed pools of boats, communication equipment, water-purification units and solar charging systems could enable communities to undertake the first response themselves.

Plan For Erosion-induced Mobility

For families living in repeatedly eroding areas, identify relocation sites before displacement and connect them with housing, livelihoods, schools, health services and transport. Relocation must mean rebuilding a life.

Create Flood-accommodation Zones 

Instead of trying to prevent flooding everywhere, selected low-density areas could accommodate seasonal inundation through appropriate uses such as fisheries, wetlands and grazing.

Protect Livelihoods And Supply Chains

Recovery must restore cattle, seeds, tools, fishing assets and working capital—not just houses. Local food, medicine, fuel and livestock-feed supply chains should also have continuity plans.

Experiment With Risk Transfer

Affordable insurance or other risk-transfer mechanisms could protect livestock, crops, fishing assets and small businesses, with support from insurers, financial institutions, CSR and foundations.

Learn From Every Major Flood 

A Flood Forensic Review should examine what failed, what worked, whether warnings led to action, and why some communities recovered faster than others.

The Brahmaputra is not an enemy Assam can defeat. It is a living river system—powerful, unpredictable and constantly changing.

The ambition should not be a flood-free Assam, but an Assam where floods cause less death, less displacement, less disruption and faster recovery.

After decades of working with disaster-affected communities, I believe resilience is built through many decisions taken before the crisis.

Brahmaputra will continue to rise.Our  vulnerability does not have to rise with it.

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*Former Head of Programme, CASA;   Former Chairperson, VANI;  Former Chairperson, Credibility Alliance. Written from Kolkata