The Northeastern region is one of the most disaster-prone areas of the country, and the incidents triggered off by the first round of monsoon rains across the region have proved it once again. Heavy rains, flash floods and landslides have together claimed at least thirty human lives in the region in the past three or four days, of which five persons have died of landslides in Guwahati, the premier city of the region where life had come to a grinding halt on Friday and Saturday due to urban floods. The same has been the situation in Imphal, the Manipur capital, where over 2,000 persons had to be rescued by emergency teams. While Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland have seen the worst damage, there have been reports of rain-related displacement and deaths from Manipur, Sikkim and Tripura. Rainfall has reportedly broken all previous records for the month of May, which is generally not considered to be a monsoon month. Seventeen districts in Assam have been affected by floods, with Lakhimpur district alone reporting over 78,000 persons as displaced. Surface communication has been disrupted across the region either due to floods or due to landslides. The Kohima-Imphal highway has been declared closed as a portion of it has collapsed due to landslides. Similar landslides disrupting road links have also been reported from Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Meghalaya too. The question is: the governments in the states of the region and the Union government all know that the Northeast is a disaster-prone region. Yet, what it looks like following the disasters reported from across the region in the past three or four days is that disaster preparedness has been at the lowest level. Several rivers, including the Brahmaputra, have crossed the red mark at various places, thus causing more alarm. Any layperson will say that half the problem of disaster in the Northeast is man-made. Rapid deforestation, rampant earth-cutting, large-scale encroachment on riverbanks, wetlands, hills and forests – all these have been done by human beings, and Nature is only reacting to the ill actions of human beings. Governments, which have the law in their hands, have unfortunately chosen to either remain silent spectators or have become active participants in this destruction of nature. The media often reports about environmental clearances being passed more on political considerations rather than keeping an eye on the environment and the people. Unplanned, haphazard urbanisation in the name of development has only led to suffering and wastage rather than making the lives of people comfortable and better. With climate change becoming a reality, the woes of people across the region are only multiplying at a fast pace.