Monsoon In Northeast: How Climate Change Is Affecting Rainfall

The morning is dark and brooding. Thick clouds hang overhead, obscuring the sun. Nazima Khatun, 14, nevertheless lays out her Class VII textbooks on a sheet of tin, hoping the gentle breeze will dry them before the next spell of rain arrives. Nearby, her mother, Shahsida Khatun, is washing a muddy wooden table by the side of the road that has been their home for the past few days ever since they were forced to evacuate their flooded homes in Phakuli village of Assam’s Nagaon district.

The road, on a higher elevation in the low-lying agricultural landscape, is now home to hundreds of people from several villages in the area, hit by one of the most devastating floods in recent times. Under plastic sheets strung on bamboo poles, sleepless mothers try to lull hungry babies to sleep. Cows strain on their leashes as they seek to break free. At night, Nazima and her mother take shelter at the nearest school that has been turned into a relief camp, about a kilometre from where her house used to be. They share a room with more than 40 people; more than 411 people are in the camp.

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But this is not just a scene from one village in Assam. As the annual floods hit the state with brute force—killing at least 180 people at the last count—millions of people have been forced to flee their homes and take shelter on roads, on emb­ankments, on roofs of flooded houses and even on treetops. But even for a state which has learnt to live with floods, the intensity of this year’s deluge has been staggering. According to official data,  1.55 million people are in 325 relief camps while 27 of the state’s 35 districts have been hit by the floods. Nearly 1.4 million people are still at risk, the government says. The loss of standing crops is yet to be estimated.

Nazima, for one, has never seen such floods though her mother says that it’s the third time in 18 years the Kopili River, a major tributary of the Brahmaputra, has washed away their house. “The first house was destroyed in 2004. After that the government built us a house. But it was also des­troyed last year,” she tells Outlook. “We had built the present house with tin sheets salvaged from the earlier house. But we could not save much apart from two tables and chairs.” Over the years, ever since a dam was built on the river in adjoining Dima Hasao district to run the Kopili Hydro Power Station, flooding by the river had become an annual affair. During the monsoons, excess water is frequently released from the barrage, leading to flooding in areas downstream.

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But never before had waters entered Kampur town, an urban settlement in Nagaon district. “We have seen floods in the Kopili for many years. We get notifications 24 hours before water is released from the dam. So villagers can prepare in advance to save their belongings and leave their houses,” says Madhab Chandra Bhuyan, a Kampur resident. “However, this year is different. Along with the release of dam water, incessant rainfalls are causing additional damage.” Besides the Kopili barrage, water was also released from the Karbi Langpi Hydro Electric Power Project situated on the Barapani river that flows through Nagaon district.

Battered Northeast

In the Northeast, where it rains round the year, the arrival of the monsoons barely registers in the psyche of the people. Not this time though. As rainfall intensity rose and rivers swelled, the signs of an impending disaster were visible. Experts link such extreme weather events to the impact of climate change. “…The rainfall trends in the last two decades and the projections that indicate the possibility of extreme rains occurring more frequently…could well have had the signature of climate change impact,” says Partha Jyoti Das, an environmental scientist working for Guwahati-based research organisation Aaranyak. “Observing what has already happened in the months of May and June, the year 2022 is shaping up to become one of those mega flood years for the state,” he adds.

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The signs are visible everywhere. The tiny hamlet of Mawsynram in Meghalaya, the wettest place in India, recorded 1,003.6 mm of precipitation in 24 hours on June 16, the highest ever on a day. Cher­rapunji, also one of the wettest places in the world and at an aerial distance of 10 km from Mawsynram, received 972 mm of rainfall during the same period, the highest in June since 1995 and the third-highest in 122 years.

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And in Manipur, incessant rainfall triggered a devastating landslide in the remote Noney district on June 30, killing at least 46 people, including 30 Territorial Army soldiers. At least 17 others are still missing.

Portraits of tragedy

Back on the road that links Kampur to neighbouring Karbi Anglong district, life goes on.

As women prepare food for the family, some of the men plan a trip back to their village in the hope of salvaging anything of use. “But you must return before dark,” is the general advice. The men nod in agreement.

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Not too far away, alongside a railway track in another village, 22-year-old Rukeya Khatun stares vacantly as she sits cross-legged under a  makeshift hut. On June 24 evening, while she was busy cooking, her two-and-a-half-year-old son slipped and fell into a flooded roadside ditch. He didn’t have a chance. “It was just a matter of a few seconds. We were being extra careful since we have been living alongside the railway tracks. We didn’t realise when he crawled out of the hut and slipped into the water,” says Sumeira Khatun, Rukeya’s sister.

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As the flood waters start to recede, similar tragic tales are slowly emerging from the devastated villages and towns of Assam. But in the big picture of the deluge, they will become mere footnotes, just numbers added to the growing list of victims. And their families will mourn the loss, till another tragedy comes calling when the next wave of floods hits.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Cause and Effect")

Syeda Ambia Zahan in Guwahati