Enhancing Assam’s Flood Resilience

With less than a month left for the start of this year’s Monsoon, completion of repair and strengthening of embankments in Assam is crucial for reducing the vulnerability of people protected by the network of embankments in the state. The embankments are prone to breaches during high flood situations, as most of these have outlived their span. Widening of the drainage area of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries due to excessive sedimentation load has made maintenance work of the embankments more challenging. With the braided river becoming wide and shallow due to the deposition of sediments, the embankments are prone to erosion, and in some areas, the embankments are required to be realigned several times. The rise of a riverbed due to sedimentation requires raising the height of embankments for required flood cushioning. Replacing the end-of-life embankments with new and stronger embankments requires mobilisation of huge funding. The state does not have adequate resources to undertake replacement of the embankments with new embankments and is dependent on external aid, such as from the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank and the central government. The central government expediting the adoption of a National Embankment Policy that will address these issues is long overdue. In last year’s floods, as many as 41 breaches occurred in embankments across the state. As most of the embankments in the state are old and weak, the possibility of the number of breaches increasing is always high. When an embankment or its stretches remains stable for successive flood seasons, the human settlement also grows in the areas protected by it. Apart from the expansion of cultivated areas, the areas protected by an embankment also witness rapid growth in the construction of dwelling houses, better roads and bridges, educational institutions, hospitals, industrial buildings, etc. The floodwater gushing through breaches in embankments creates havoc, affecting large populations and damaging houses and public infrastructure. The experiment of application of geo-mega tube technology, which involves filling large geo-tubes with sand for immediate plugging of embankment breaches, has proven to be successful but is only a stop-gap solution. The focus of the mitigation strategy till a stronger and new embankment network replaces the current network lies on intensifying surveillance to identify stretches with potential breaches. The Assam government’s approval of the formation of youth committees for embankment protection is a pragmatic approach to step up monitoring and reporting embankment status so that the Water Resources Department can promptly initiate protection measures. As the staff strength of the department is inadequate to monitor the vast length of embankments, youth volunteering to shoulder the responsibility will go a long way in strengthening monitoring of the embankments. A group of about 10-15 youth volunteers will be responsible for an 8-10 km stretch of embankment, and they will be provided raincoats, torches, rubber boots and geo bags, and they will promptly alert the department whenever they observe a potential or developing breach so that timely protection measures can be taken to plug it. Completion of all work of raising and strengthening of embankments followed by strengthening of the monitoring mechanism through deployment of youth volunteers can significantly reduce flood intensity caused by breaches in embankments, provided the coordination between them and the department is real-time and there is no dearth of geo bags at vulnerable locations. Adoption of this innovative strategy is laudable, and its effectiveness will be put to the test during flood waves this year. Nevertheless, the state mobilising adequate resources to replace the existing embankments in a phased manner with concrete embankments is crucial for the sustainability of structural measures in the state. The argument advanced by some quarters that instead of focusing on the engineered solution of embankments, more emphasis should be laid on non-structural mitigation measures such as improving flood early warning systems to provide more lead time to the disaster management authorities for evacuation of vulnerable people to safe shelter places, flood relief, flood insurance cover, etc. Experiential learning of decades of flood management in the state calls for an integrated approach of combining both structural and non-structural mitigation measures. A comprehensive National Embankment Policy as recommended by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Water Resources will help the state, like Assam, which is annually ravaged by multiple waves of floods, to bank on adequate support from the central government to address the challenges of integrated flood management. The central government’s stand that flood management, including erosion control, comes under the purview of the state government has come in the way of the adoption of a national embankment policy. The flood situation is worsening due to a rise in extreme weather events, like large excess heavy rains on account of climate change impact has made it more difficult for Assam to manage on its own. The central government providing adequate funding support to replace the existing embankments with new concrete embankments will significantly enhance the flood resilience of the state.