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‘Majuli in Peril’: Challenging the received wisdom on flood control in Brahmaputra River Basin, Assam (1940–2000)

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Abstract

This paper seeks to provide a framework to understand the politics of flood control and representation of deluge ‘narrative’ by looking at Majuli—one of the largest freshwater river islands in the world, located in the upper Brahmaputra valley in Assam. Policy makers and state planner present simplistic explanation of flood and its resultant impact on the island habitable space, as a ‘techno-managerial’ crisis needing policy redemption through ‘experts’ intervention. I present the phenomenon of flooding as a ‘techno-political’ problem and examine the politics of knowledge production. The paper thus challenges the received wisdom on ecological change promoted by institutions who have been working to save the island from two perceived threats—floods and bank erosion. Through a synoptic survey on state measures to control flood in the Brahamapura River Basin since the 1950s, I will show how the ‘statist ecological discourse’ based on equilibrium and linear models underlined by a ‘command and control’ discourse have dominated policy making on flood mitigation- devaluing other perspectives of ecological change. These new revisionist directions in ecology and science policy discourse bring important insights to understand the phenomena of floods from the multiple pathways of an ecological change paradigm and the ways they are mitigated and perceived.

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Notes

  1. Schedule Tribes are notified marginalised communities in the India Constitution. They are listed under the Sixth Schedule. In the Brahmaputra river valley, Assam there are a number of Schedule Tribe groups who enjoy special rights under the constitutional scheme of positive discrimination.

  2. Being bid since 2004 for ‘Cultural Landscape’ World Heritage Site status through UNESCO.

  3. It is important to note that in the post 1950s, Assam floods have severely affected important south bank towns of Upper Assam Valley—for example, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Sibsagar—which are considered to be the economic powerhouse of the state and the seat of elite Assamese oligarchy and is also the important sites of tea plantation.

  4. Gazetteer of India-Assam state, vol. 1, Gazetteer of India (1999), Guwahati.

  5. Majuli Master Plan, (1998), Brahmaputra Board, Basistha; Guwahati, Assam, Ministry of Water Resources, Goverment of India.

  6. In the pre colonial period the British government appointed three committees to asses the problem of floods in the Brahmaputra Basin (1921, 1923, and 1945), but none of the committee recommendations to adopt structural measures to control floods were ever taken up. In fact the imperial government was more interested in clearing drainage congestion. Majuli Master Plan (1998), Brahmaputra Board, Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India.

  7. Ibid. p. 16.

  8. Ibid. p.18.

  9. It must be noted here that embankment in the Mississippi flood plain is in serious question because of its reputation for failures. Neither should it need to be noted that the Brahmaputra and Mississippi are two different river systems where the fluvial processes operate in a different scale. To universalize flood problems is not an appropriate step while seeking solution to the problem.

  10. The Brahmaputra Board was established as a statutory body by an Act passed in parliament on the 3rd of September 1980, and works under the Ministry of Water Resources. The main task of the Board is to prepare Master Plan for the Brahmaputra river basin and to develop measures for the protection of important towns through embankment construction, design and implement hydro-power projects and exploit river navigation (inland waterways) in the Brahmaputra basin for trade and commerce.

  11. Supreme Court Directs Centre to Implement Interlinking of Rivers Project, The Indian Express, 27th February, 2012.

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  1. Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

    Debojyoti Das

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Das, D. ‘Majuli in Peril’: Challenging the received wisdom on flood control in Brahmaputra River Basin, Assam (1940–2000). Water Hist 6, 167–185 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-014-0098-2

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