Anshu Gupta

A man sits on his boat in the flooded fields of Assam in 2012.

The continuous rainfall in the catchment areas of the river Brahmaputra, Barak and their tributaries during the third week of June in 2012 led to massive floods and subsequent devastation in many districts of Assam. The floods that spread over 27 districts affected 23,91,369 people in 4,540 villages*.

When you make peace with your destiny and carve a life out of it, this is what it would look like. People in Assam have accepted their fate and planned their life according to the recurring floods every year. Building their houses on stilts, dismantling them and moving on to live on boats every flood season is normalcy now. They do not expect help or relief and sadly not even attention for their misery anymore. What is more shocking is that this new normal has become a widely accepted narrative for outsiders even and is a worrisome trend.

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