See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264878734 The Flood Situation of Assam – A Case Study Article CITATION READS 1 34,158 2 authors, including: Mukul Bora Dibrugarh University 10 PUBLICATIONS 88 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Mukul Bora on 31 October 2014. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. The Flood Situation of Assam – A Case Study Mukul Chandra Bora Lecturer (Sélection Grade) in Civil Engineering Dibrugarh Polytechnic, Lahowal: Pin: 786010 Assam, India Abstract The problem caused by water may broadly be catagorised into two major groups’ viz. shortage of water and surplus of water. Shortage of water causes drought and surplus water causes flood. The water is the vital ingredients for the survival of human being but sometimes it may cause woe to the human life not due to insufficient water but due to abundant water which in turn causes the natural disaster called as flood. Assam is situated at the easternmost part of India. Geographically it is at the foothills of the Himalaya. Every year Assam experiences a huge amount of losses due to devastating flood caused by the river Brahmaputra. The losses are more in few places like (Majuli, the biggest river Island), Dhemaji, North Lakhimpur, Dhakuakhana and few places of Barak valley in Assam. The problem of flood is very old in Assam and the solution is very much difficult due to complex and devastating nature of the River Brahmaputra. Both short term and long term measures are sometimes failed to mitigate the losses caused by flood. This paper presents the case study on the losses in terms of livestock, human lives and that in terms of property that have taken place in Dhakuakhana area of Assam. Keywords: Water problem, flood, River, Brahmaputra, losses. 1. Introduction: India is a vast country with lot of diversity in water related problem with woes due to shortage and abundance in water. Western part of the country facing shortage of water and the Eastern part facing surplus of water in the form of flood. The Western part mainly comprises of Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar shows shortage of drinking water and the eastern part shows abundant source of water. The North Eastern part of India mainly comprises of Assam, and its neighboring seven states are getting sufficient amount of rainfall in monsoon and hence the rivers become sufficient in water and causes flood in summer. Assam is one of the worst sufferers of flood due to River Brahmaputra and its tributaries and it comes in every year as a festival which causes woes rather than joy. The districts of Assam which are at the upper reaches of river Brahmaputra like Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Jorhat, North Lakhimpur, Golaghat and the river Island Majuli are the worst sufferer of flood caused by mighty Brahmaputra. Here in this paper the folld havoc caused by river Brahmaputra in the place Dhakuakhana in the Districts of North Lakhimpur are discussed in terms of losses of livestock, paddy fields, human lives etc. The Fig.1 and Fig. 2 shows the physical and political map of the state of Assam wherin the district of North Lakhimpur is marked with arrow mark which is the district under discussion of this paper. Fig. 1: Physical Map of Assam Fig. 2: Political Map of Assam BALWOIS 2010 - Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia - 25, 29 May 2010 1 2. Brief Description of Dhakuakhana: Till the arrival of the Ahom from Thailand, under the leadership of SUKAFA in 13th century AD Dhakuakhana was known as HABUNG. The legendary leader perhaps aimed at HABUNG. But he despised his plan when HABUNG got submerged during the devastating flood in 1244 AD and sailed to Dikhowmukh and was included by the Bhuyan’s of Lakhimpur. It is however unknown, how long HABUNG was ruled by Bhuyan dynasty. The two major rivers/tributaries that run through HABUNG are CHARIKORIA and KORHA. CHARIKORIA said to have her name from the four ‘KORIS’ (wins) that people had to pay to the boatmen to take them across. On the other hand during Ahom rule the royal tax collectors used to come by KORHA and had taken away goods forcefully from the tenants who failed to pay the taxes. Thus the river came to be known as KORHA which means takings away forcefully. The history of HABUNG is closely related with the Bhaktty movement started in Assame by Shankardeva. His great disciple Mahapurukh Madhabdeva passed his childhood IN Ghagaritool. During, Ahom rule Sanskrit was taught in “TOOL’S here. Today, Dhakuakhana is marching equal in respect of education and culture with the rest of the world. Looking in other material aspects of development the people of Dhakuakhana are but keen in this respect and consistently trying to make a global impact. Dhakuakhana is a place in the district of North Lakhimpur comprising large number of villages and some small growing towns. It is situated between 27.60° - 27.35° north latitude and 94.24° - 94.42° east longitude. It is situated between the mighty Brahmaputra and its tributary called Subansiri and basically of silt deposition mainly caused by these two rivers making it rich in fertility and hence ideally suitable for cultivation. During monsoon, many places of this area get inundated by the rivers and become inaccessible, when boat becomes the only means of communications. In Dhakuakhana, 94% population of this place is depend on Cultivation and can be taken as the backbone of the economy of the sub-division. About 3.5% is depend on Fish cultivation and 1.5 % population depends on livestock. So it can be concluded that the major economy of this region is dominated by cultivation of rice and other paddy crops and hence inundation of paddy field by flood water occurs during the period of cultivation brings tears to the people. The other impacts of flood as it always associated with erosion repeatedly displaced the person from one place to another which is the like killing of person admitted to the hospital. The sericulture sector of Dhakuakhana sub-division is also faced huge damaged due to recurring flood and sand deposition in the firm location. A survey conducted to access the migration pattern in the flood and erosion affected villages shows that more 60% of the youth from these villages have migrated to other places of the state and about 22% youth have migrated to other states of India. According to the June 2008 project Preparatory Technical Assistance, Phase-II draft feasibility report of the North East Integrated Flood and Riverbank Erosion Risk Management Project to be financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Matmora area of Dhakuakhana which has a dominant 58 percent schedule tribe (ST) population with a population density of 182 persons per square kilometer, is facing floods and erosion in a recurring manner for the past about a decade now, with 93 per cent of its 2,1186 households being affected. The area comprises 200 villages with 34.04 per cent of its population being poor. It has so far incurred a loss worth around US $ 22.46 million (around Rs. 90 crore) due to flood and erosion. The other factor affecting the livelihood of the people is sand deposition. 3. Causes of Flood: The construction of the embankment from Dijmur to Tekeliphutia on the right bank of river Brahmaputra was aimed at protection of the riverside villagers from annual devastating flood and subsequent intensive river bank erosion sixty years back. During the process more than ten thousand families were displaced from their paternal acre and till today many of these displaced families living on the embankment without having any compensation from the authority. The embankment could serve its purpose next thirty years of its construction but by this time the embankment caused permanent deterioration in the river character, the sand and silt load entrapped in between these two embankments -along right and left banks of the river lead to deposition of sediment in the river corridor which raised the river bed to an alarming extent and the earlier meandering character of the river changed into braided character. Thus the over-topping of flood water, frequent breach in the embankment, river bank erosion etc. become a regular phenomena for the river Brahmaputra. The flood due to river Brahmaputra as a result of these complications becomes more devastating and erratic in nature. The recurring flood, erosion, sand deposition, displacement these entire make several thousands of families marginalized and bulldozed the development efforts. The portion of the Dijmur-Tkeliphuta embankment form Sisikolghar to Matmora protects the riverine portion of Dhemaji BALWOIS 2010 - Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia - 25, 29 May 2010 2 district particularly the Pachim (West) Dhemaji, Machkhua portion and Dhakuakhana block of Lakhimpur district. The extensive bank erosion in this portion of the embankment actually compelled to realign the structure six to eight times in last twenty years. The erosion and realignment in construction of the embankment extinguished and eliminated about 18 villages from this area under Matmora and KherkotIa GP (Goan Pnachayat)s. In the year 2007 the embankment breached near Jhanji village and was about 500 mt wide, which was plugged in 2008 but there occurred three breaches in the same year which developed a wide opening in the embankment of around 2.5 km width. In the year 2009 efforts were made to construct the embankment using the geo-textile technology, which was continued till month of June 2009. This year the monsoon rainfall occurred in the North east only by last week of June, thus though the embankment construction work was started lately the works could continued till June.