Sakina Khatoon is among 300 people marooned in a reserve forest for more than a week since the deadly floods ravaged at least 12 villages in Nellie in Morigaon district of India\u2019s northeastern state of Assam. With their homes and fields submerged in Dahuti Habi village, 70km (43 miles) away from Assam\u2019s main city of Guwahati, the families have no option but to inadvertently risk conflict with wildlife in an elephant corridor in Nellie\u2019s Khulahat Forest.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, three of them came very close to the camp,\u201d Khatoon told Al Jazeera. \u201cEveryone started shouting and drove them away. But we didn\u2019t sleep last night.\u201d Khatoon said people were living in perpetual fear of the water level rising and the tuskers that continually stray towards them in the forest.<\/p>\n
Millions in Assam have been affected by the floods since heavy pre-monsoon rains first hit the region last month, inundating large parts of the valley. After the initial deluge in\u00a0May, no one expected the floods to worsen with the arrival of monsoon showers, leading to the breach of 297 embankments in 20 districts by June 19.<\/p>\n
Displaced residents recalled seeing this ferocity of the Kopili River, a tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra, in 2004 and 2007. This year, everyone agreed, is the worst. As of Sunday, 2,524 villages in Assam were affected across 27 districts, with more than 200,000 displaced people taking shelter in 564 relief camps across the state, according to Assam\u2019s Disaster Management Authority. At last count, the death toll had reached 127. Heavy rainfall aside, the release of water from nearby hydroelectric projects on the Kopili River in Dima Hasao and Karbi Anglong overwhelmed the embankments in districts such as Morigaon and the adjoining Nagaon.<\/p>\n
S Brahma, circle officer in Raha, a small town in Nagaon, told Al Jazeera they had been\u00a0warned before the opening of the four sluice gates in Dima Hasao. \u201cBut even the weather forecast is uncertain these days,\u201d she said. \u201cThe weather has been very unpredictable this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunger and water scarcity<\/strong><\/p>\n As soon as the water gushed into her village on June 17, Khatoon, along with her husband, son and two daughters, started preparing to move to higher ground. The family loaded their granary reserves onto wooden boats along with necessary cooking utensils and paddled themselves to safety inside the forest. \u201cWe have managed to save only some of the two quintals of paddy from our reserves that went under water,\u201d said Khatoon. \u201cEverything else \u2013 our house, cattle and all other belongings \u2013 was lost.\u201d<\/p>\n With little provisions available, many in the camp are getting by on one square meal a day. \u201cPeople are surviving by picking up some labour work but that is also hard to find because of the floods,\u201d Khatoon said. The floods have also caused a huge crisis of drinking water, with people in partially inundated houses and relief camps struggling to find it. In Khulahat Forest camp, residents have taken to digging 2-3 feet deep to find water for drinking and cooking.<\/p>\n Khatoon, who works as an accredited social health activist (ASHA) in Dahuti Habi village, said the drinking water crisis has led to a host of water-borne diseases. \u201cMany people in the camp have contracted diarrhoea, fever and dysentery as well as blisters on their feet,\u201d she said, exhibiting the fungal growth around one of the inmates\u2019 feet.<\/p>\n \u201cThe floodwater contains lot of faecal bacteria and viruses, so oral faecal diseases like diarrhoea and typhoid apart from skin allergies and infectious diseases will be common,\u201d he said, adding that his hospital had already started preparing to treat immuno-compromised people in the paediatric and geriatric age groups. Ashraful Islam, a former school teacher camping at a vegetable market turned into a relief camp in Nellie, said they were easily looking at another month before they could go home.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government should have made arrangements for drinking water. The only time we received any aid was from some Congress politicians who distributed a half-litre bottle to each family along with some snacks,\u201d he said, referring to the main opposition party in the state.<\/p>\n \u2018No farming this year\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Nearly 32km (20 miles) away in the adjoining Nagaon district\u2019s Rupahitoli village, residents were restively fishing in the floodwaters as the Kopili River continued to inundate the interior roads on its path. By noon, Rama Deka joined a line of men lowering their Chinese fishing nets inside the water gushing downstream. When the waters first rushed in four days ago, Deka\u2019s mud house and one acre of paddy fields were inundated, causing a loss of more than 50,000 rupees ($650).<\/p>\n \u201cIf the water dries down quickly, maybe I can plant mustard,\u201d he hoped. \u201cOtherwise, there will be no farming left to do this year and I will have to go back to doing masonry work.\u201d\u00a0Deka was unable to catch any fish that he had hoped to cook with the rice and lentils they had received in relief packets.<\/p>\n Government figures estimate a total of 91,658 hectares (226,492 acres) of crop area has been damaged by the floods, raising urgent concerns of livelihood in a state where agriculture employs 53 percent of the workforce and accounts for 75 percent of the state revenue, directly or indirectly.<\/p>\n Experts are of the view that while floods make the valley fertile, a high level of silt deposition damages the land for paddy cultivation. \u201cWhile you can grow other crops in the flood-affected areas, if lesser land is available then it will definitely have a direct impact on food security,\u201d Ananta Saikia who teaches at Assam Agriculture University in Jorhat, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n The land crunch, he added, is further compounded by population pressures and the release of water from hydroelectric power plants in the state and neighbouring countries such as Bhutan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[178],"tags":[],"region":[],"source":[537],"country":[9161],"state":[],"city":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/95705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/newss"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/95705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95706,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/95705\/revisions\/95706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95705"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=95705"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=95705"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=95705"},{"taxonomy":"state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/state?post=95705"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=95705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}