Promises

Flooding in Assam is not limited to debates and media headlines, the issue also gets highlighted in poll manifestoes and proposed policies. In July 2017, Nitin Gadkari, who was then the union minister for road transport and highways, shipping and water resources, said that the Brahmaputra river would be dredged from September that year.

The announcement was made after Sarbananda Sonowal, who was the chief minister of Assam then, had promised the same the previous year. Dredging, which involves digging out excessive silt accumulated on the riverbed, is carried out with big vessels called dredgers. The exercise would “increase water retention capacity of the river” and “minimise flood and erosion”, it was announced.

Another related project to build an expressway of around 1300 km along the banks of the Brahmaputra river – along an 890 km stretch of the river – from Sadiya to Dhubri was also announced in 2017 by Gadkari. The excess silt dredged from the Brahmaputra was to be used to construct the expressway at an estimated cost of ₹40,000 crore. It was said that the project, besides expanding the road network in Assam on both banks, would address the problem of erosion on the river, which is another major concern in the state.

In March 2021, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party made a promise to make Assam flood-free. Party national president JP Nadda said this in Guwahati while releasing the party manifesto ahead of the assembly polls. “Our first commitment is Mission Brahmaputra as part of which we will take measures to control the problem of floods that plague Assam each year. It will include scientific ways like dredging, management of tributaries and construction of big reservoirs to divert the extra water,” Nadda said.

Implementation

Dredging on a few select stretches of the Brahmaputra river has been done annually for years by the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), which is under the Union ministry of ports, shipping and waterways, to allow ferries and boats to navigate. But large-scale dredging on the 890-km length of the river in Assam with the aim of mitigating floods it yet to even start

In February last year, the Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) signed an agreement worth ₹204.5 crore with IWAI to maintain and develop national waterways on rivers in the northeast. The project on Brahmaputra, Dhansiri, Barak and Kopili rivers would involve dredging at specific stretches to maintain a fairway on them having a width of 32 metres and depth of two metres to 2.5 metres.

“Our ministry has nothing to do with flood control. The agreement between DCI and IWAI is to maintain the minimum required depth at some parts of the rivers for navigability. Dredging will begin in October this year when floods are over and the flow on the rivers is less. This project could indirectly help in reducing flood in some areas, but it’s not the primary aim,” said an official at the Union ministry of ports, shipping and waterways, asking not to be named.

In February 2021, four years after announcing the expressway, Gadkari told the Rajya Sabha that there was no proposal to construct the expressway on both banks of Brahmaputra using excess silt collected after dredging the river.

Officials in the Assam government said there’s been no progress on the Mission Brahmaputra promise made by the BJP in its 2021 election manifesto. Neither the union government nor the state government — both BJP-run — has mentioned the project in their budget announcements.

Politics

Since it’s a major issue in the state and affects millions annually, political parties are quick to blame each other for failing to address the problem.

“The people of the state have been squarely betrayed by the ‘double engine’ promise of (Narendra) Modi and (Amit) Shah to make Assam a ‘flood-free state’”, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X on June 21 taking a swipe at the BJP.

Congress MP from Jorhat, Gaurav Gogoi, accused the state government last week of failing to address the issue, He has alleged that the water resources department is an “automated teller machine”, which has given contracts to big contractors to repair or build embankments, many of which have breached this season leading to floods.

Reacting to Gogoi, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took a swipe at Gogoi’s father, Tarun Gogoi, who was the chief minister of the state for three consecutive terms from 2001 to 2016, before the BJP came to power.

“Very few embankments built by the water resources department breached this year. And we didn’t build those. What can I do if somebody blames his own father for that? In 2004, a total of 350 embankments had breached,” Sarma said last week.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, who visited Assam and Manipur on July 8 blamed the BJP governments in Assam and the Centre for “gross and grave mismanagement”.

“Dredging the entire stretch of Brahmaputra is almost impossible. The river’s banks stretch to around 9 km at some points. Making Assam flood-free by dredging a huge river is more a utopian idea than an implementable one,” said a senior BJP office bearer in Assam who asked not to be named.

View of the experts

Last month, while chairing a review meeting in New Delhi on monsoon flood preparedness, Union home minister Shah advocated the creation of at least 50 large ponds across the northeast to divert water from the Brahmaputra river, which in turn will aid in flood management, agriculture, irrigation and development of tourism.

It’s a new suggestion, which experts feel is another addition to the list of measures to tackle floods that haven’t materialised.

Experts said that despite the devastation, the annual floods are important for Assam as the silt deposited on the banks of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries during the season add to the soil’s fertility, which is important for an agrarian economy like the state.

“Promises like making Assam flood-free come from a lack of understanding of the flood plains, which the state is. Assam is nourished, nurtured and sustained by floods. You can’t make the state free and if you do that you are taking the fertility out of the flood plain,” said Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, a water infrastructure expert based in Guwahati.

Rahman said interventions like dredging, and construction of expressways and ponds are populist measures, pushed by the “politician-contractor lobby” which require a lot of infrastructure and money, which, in turn, could lead to the payment of commissions.

“Resource allocation for structural measures is very high around 95%. However, the allocation of funds for research on the Brahmaputra is very low, around 5%. When there’s less research it leads to such interventions. But if there’s more allocation for research, we would understand the river system better and make policies which will lead to effective flood mitigation measures,” said Rahman.

“Assam has a lot of wetlands, but they are getting lost due to unplanned and rapid urbanisation. Instead of constructing large ponds, it would have been better not to intervene and let the wetlands flourish and maintain connectivity between them, which in turn would have addressed the flood issue better,” he added.