1.5mn displaced as floods wreak havoc in Assam

Agencies/Guwahati

An aerial view of a flooded island in Majuli, in the northeastern state of Assam yesterday. Floods have displaced more than 1.5mn people in the state

Floods have forced nearly 1.5mn people to flee their homes in northeastern India where authorities have declared a health alert, officials said yesterday. “Eighteen of 27 districts of Assam have been hit by floods with 1.4mn displaced and 11 people drowned in separated incidents in the past week,” the Disaster Management agency said in a statement. The floods, caused by relentless rains, marked the second round of massive flooding in two months to hit India’s northeast and come towards the end of the June-to-September monsoon season. Nearly 130 people died and 6mn were displaced by floods in Assam in July. At least 21 people were killed in landslides and another eight were missing in the mountainous state of Sikkim, said state government spokesman A S Tobgay. Rescue officials said in the latest floods, at least 2,200 villages had been swamped by overflowing waters from the rain-swollen Brahmaputra River. Himanta Biswa Sarmah, the health minister of Assam state, said that a “maximum health alert” to avert outbreaks of diarrhoea or diseases such as typhoid had been declared in the devastated zone. The annual monsoon provides vital irrigation for India’s farmers but also claims many casualties from flooding and landslides. Officials said flood victims had been evacuated to temporary shelters on higher ground. “We’ve dispatched doctors and paramedics to ensure there is no outbreak of disease,” Sarmah said in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city. Victims and an opposition party staged protests in flood-hit areas against what they said were shortages of emergency supplies in the Congress-ruled state. “The government has failed to provide adequate relief supplies including food and medicines,” said Sarbananda Sonowal, a local leader of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. “In many parts of the state people are even living without food,” he added. Rehab India Foundation, a voluntary group said heavy rains disrupted its plans to supply food and other essential items to flood-hit people. Almost the entire 420sq km of Kaziranga National Park was also flooded, the Press Trust of India reported. The wildlife park is home to the world’s single largest population of one-horned rhinos. A 2012 census in Kaziranga counted 2,290 of the rhinos, out of a global population of 3,300. The species declined to near extinction in the early 1990s and is listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Kaziranga has fought a sustained battle against rhino poachers, who kill the animals for their horns that fetch huge prices in some Asian countries where they are deemed to be an aphrodisiac. Over the past 60 years, successive governments have built levees along most of the Brahmaputra, which is Assam’s main river and is fed by Himalayan snow melt and some of the world’s heaviest rainfall. But experts say the embankments are not only poorly maintained but are a discredited form of flood management.   Sanjoy Hazarika, who is the director of the Centre for North East Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, said one critical issue in flood preparation is whether China has been sharing meteorological data with the Indian meteorological department and whether that information is being conveyed to state departments to help disaster management efforts.He also said that the release of water from upstream dams without informing people downstream and the effect of climate change on the glacial melt may be contributing to the frequent floods.Predicting the monsoon rainfall in South Asia remains a challenge, even though the survival of crops and livestock and the nourishment of millions depend on it. The shortcomings of the India’s meteorological department have led to private companies entering the localised weather forecasting market, according to news reports.