Floods in Northeast India Are Less a Natural Disaster, More a Policy Failure

The Region is Flooded Every Year, Yet No Policy Adjustment Follows

June 4, 2025

Flooding in northeast India has long been treated as an unavoidable natural disaster – a view convenient for those in power, as it conceals the fact that the annual devastation is not inevitable. On June 3, the death toll from rain-related disasters across the eight northeastern States rose to 47 – a loss that could have been prevented.

As of June 4, over 600,000 (6 lakh) people remained affected, according to media reports, but there was no acknowledgment by the authorities that the destruction of homes, crops, schools and livelihoods every year is driven less by nature’s fury and more by human complacency, poor planning and policy neglect.

The monsoon rains and the mighty rivers of the region, especially the Brahmaputra, the Barak and the Teesta—are not new phenomena. Nor is the neglect, or the failure to adapt governance, planning and infrastructure to match the region’s known hydrological behaviour.

Assam, for instance, is flooded every year, sometimes two or three times in a single season. In 2022, over 2.4 million people were affected in a single wave of floods. The state has more than 4,500 km of embankments, which are raised structures built along riverbanks to prevent floodwaters from spilling into surrounding land. But many of these are decades old, weakened by years of neglect, and breached repeatedly.

This year, too, flooding followed embankment breaches, yet there has been no serious investment in durable repairs or long-term solutions. In some stretches, these embankments have narrowed the river’s course, worsening the force of water and turning what was meant to protect into a source of danger.

When embankments breach, it’s often because they were poorly built, not maintained, or weakened by years of patchwork repairs—not because the water behaved unpredictably. In many cases, they are too low, too narrow, or too old to handle the volume and force of water they are supposed to contain. So while nature provides the pressure, it’s human decisions that determine whether the defences hold or collapse.

If water rises above embankments, and floods still occur, blame still lies with planners and administrators. This is because flood risk modelling, hydrological forecasting and embankment design should all account for rising water levels. If they didn’t anticipate current rainfall patterns—despite decades of evidence—or failed to revise old designs, then it’s a planning failure.

Flood management in the northeast appears to treat rivers as isolated drainage problems, rather than dynamic systems that flow across multiple regions, carrying sediment, water and risk. It seemingly ignores the way rivers behave as a whole. When one district constructs an embankment without considering upstream or downstream impact, it often pushes the water problem onto another area. This reactive mindset fails to address the root causes of flooding, which often lie in deforestation upstream, silt accumulation, or blocked drainage in adjacent wetlands.

What is needed instead is to focus more on basin-level planning—an integrated way that considers the full geography of a river system: its tributaries, natural floodplains, wetlands, settlements and infrastructure. This means states must work together, sharing data and plans, rather than acting in silos.

Planning should account for seasonal variations in water flow, sediment movement, and areas that naturally absorb floodwaters.

On paper, some mechanisms for interstate coordination do exist. Institutions like the Brahmaputra Board, set up in 1980 under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, were created precisely to enable basin-level planning across the northeastern states and parts of Bengal. The North Eastern Council (NEC) and the Central Water Commission (CWC) also facilitate inter-state coordination and data sharing on water resources. However, in practice, these bodies have been largely ineffective, underfunded and sidelined in state-level decision-making. Their recommendations are often ignored, their plans remain on paper and coordination rarely translates into unified action on the ground.

The encroachment of wetlands and floodplains is another issue governments have allowed to fester.

In Guwahati, the city has expanded rapidly into low-lying areas that were once natural drainage zones. Lokhra, for example, sees waterlogging even after moderate rain because the natural channels and wetlands that once held excess water have been built over. These were deliberate decisions made through weak urban planning and lax enforcement of zoning rules. Local bodies and planning authorities have sanctioned construction in areas they know are prone to flooding.

There is also little recognition of the knowledge and practices of local communities who have lived with floods for generations.

In Majuli, the river island in Assam, residents used to build stilt houses and follow seasonal migration patterns to higher ground. Over time, these practices have faded, replaced by brick structures on vulnerable land and a growing dependence on external relief. The state has not made efforts to support such traditional coping strategies through housing policies or disaster management planning. Instead, families are left to rebuild the same structures year after year, with little support beyond temporary relief camps.

Warning systems also remain weak in many parts of the northeast. While the India Meteorological Department provides forecasts, these do not always reach the last mile. In remote areas of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, warnings arrive late or not at all, giving residents little time to evacuate or protect their belongings.

Responsibility lies squarely with the governments—both state and central. Successive administrations have failed to treat floods in the northeast as a governance issue. After all, elections are not won or lost based on how well a party governs, but on how effectively it mobilises votes along ethnic and religious lines—often through false promises and driven by a self-serving desire to rule rather than to govern. That won’t change until we demand better.

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