When Books Sink Underwater In Assam

In 2017, when Bipin Dhane was asked to establish the first school for the Mising tribe in the river island of Majuli, Assam, he could not refuse. The former engineer had left his job in Singapore at the end of 2015 to volunteer in Majuli where he ultimately would become the headmaster and founder of The Hummingbird School, an establishment initially made from land and bamboo donated by the villagers, Dhane said.

The people of Kulamua, a village in Majuli where he was setting up the school, had assured him that the floods during the monsoon were manageable, as the water would only reach his ankles at the most.

Five months later, Dhane woke up to floodwater below his bed.

The under-construction school was barely floating amidst muddy water. The books and papers were soaked and the 50 sacks of cement that were stored to continue construction of the school building were washed away, said Krishna Pegu, 45, the father of two middle-school children enrolled at the school.

Dhane added that since 2017, every year, floods have continued to damage the school, with the most recent being in July 2024, where water went up to a height of eight feet. With tree canopies peeking from the waters and farm grounds fully submerged, students living in the stilted hostels had to stay indoors until the waters receded.

In 2017, the floods had led to schools being shut for two weeks. However, this year, the classes for grade 9 and 10 continued at residential homes, as buildings were constructed at an 11-feet height to avoid floods. The school’s dormitories adapted the design of the Mising tribe’s chang ghar, traditional bamboo homes on wooden stilts, approximately six feet above the ground, to avoid floods.

Dhane added that students commuted to classes by boats, the only means of transport during the floods. “There are still [classrooms] where it gets waterlogged,” he said. “But it does not stop the school from functioning.”

However, one of the biggest concerns Dhane has for his students, during floods, is having access to drinking water and a toilet. The school has since built two disaster-resilient structures. These are rooms at a height and provide drinking water and toilets. Another concern is that during or after floods, children and the school staff often remain absent, as many of them suffer from cholera, malaria, diarrhoea, and skin diseases owing to the dirty water.

Climate change makes many areas flood-prone

Students and teachers from flood-affected areas in Assam continue to be impacted every year with schools being temporarily closed and equipment becoming permanently damaged as annual floods hit the state. With limited government assistance and resources, teachers in Assam are finding ways to make students aware of climate change and make schools more flood-adaptive.

Heavy monsoons in Assam, and the Brahmaputra, a 2,900-kilometre river originating from the Himalayan glaciers and emptying out in the Bay of Bengal at the Meghna river, along with its 32 major tributaries, contribute to the state’s floods.

As global temperatures continue to rise, the Himalayan glaciers are expected to melt at a higher rate, according to climate scientists.

“Farmers typically welcome floodwaters, as it nourishes semi-aquatic crops such as rice farms,” said Rizwan Uz Zaman, a climate consultant at Assam Climate Change Management Society. “Yet, the unpredictable heavy rainfall, poor infrastructure for flood prevention and frequent droughts throughout Assam have made some regions of the state more flood prone in the last 20 years.”

Assam’s Majuli island is surrounded by the Brahmaputra river that originates in the Himalayan range in the south, the Kharikatia-Suti river in the northeast, and the Subansiri river and its tributaries in the northwest. The  once 1,256-square-kilometres island from the 20th century has now shrunk to 352 square kilometres owing to erosion caused by floods.

Floods became frequent after one of the largest recorded earthquakes struck the region in 1950. The 8.7 magnitude Assam-Tibet earthquake brought massive sediment from the Himalayan mountains and its tributaries into the Brahamputra, said Naravan Varma, a professor of the National University of Singapore researching environmental policy in Assam.

“Excessive sediment load in the river leads to braiding,” Varma added which, as a research paper notes, “increases the spilling of floodwater over the banks”.

A flood-adaptive community faces challenges from recent floods

The name Mising translates to ‘man of the water’ with mi meaning man and sing referring to water or river. However, unpredictable floods challenge the Mising tribe, who are normally accustomed to floods.

The Indian government has identified the Mising population under Scheduled Tribes, a category that gives India’s tribal communities socioeconomic protections and other measures to uplift the marginalised. Hence, Assam’s Public Health department provided Tamara Village’s Tamara Lower Primary School in the Lakhimpur district, a water tank, which helps filter out the flooded water into clean water, said Krishna Deori, headmaster of the school. Deori said that he needs to place students’ free lunch meals and textbooks in high shelves, in preparation for the floods every year, which last up to two weeks.

“The Mising tribe is attuned to flooding. However, that history does not  work because the problem has shifted from a flood issue to a landlessness one,” Varma said. “They are losing land because the [Assam’s] Water Resource Department acquires their remaining land for their embankment.”

Varma is referring to the state’s policy that embankments should be built 500 metres away from the river. As the river washes away more land, the embankment is required to be reconstructed closer towards the villages harmed by floods.

While embankments are one of the main flood mitigation policies for India, Varma said the infrastructure is a “band-aid approach.”

Today, embankment breaches, happening from floodwaters and heavy rain, are a result of embankments constructed after the 1950 earthquake made mostly of local soil and sediment. These embankments are “washed away by large floods and by the natural relocation of channels in the braided river,” said Robert Wasson, a geomorphologist.

Floods on average, affected just under 496,858 people each day throughout June and July 2024. The number of districts affected varied daily, ranging from 2 to 30. July 15 stood out with 2,420,722 people impacted by floods across 30 districts, making it one of the most severe days during this period, according to data from Assam’s Flood Report.

How floods are affecting schools

In his eight years of teaching, headmaster Basu Biswas said he never expected the floods to enter his five-room government school, soak up exam papers, and leave all the furniture infested with fungus.

“Unlike the majority Mising populated schools, where students are brought up learning how to swim, students at Alichuk do not know how to,” said Mohammad Huessein, founder of the school.

Alichuk Lower Primary School was struck by floods from the Dikrong River on June 14, 2023. In addition to the month-long summer holidays, students were required to stay inside their homes, hence not being able to attend school for over 45 days.

The school teaching 60 students is at risk from floods since it is at a lower level than surrounding fisheries and just a few kilometres away from Brahamputra’s sub-tributary, the Dikrong river.

When Biswas realised the heavy monsoon of June 2023 would impact his school, he went back to school through a different route to secure the documents and exam papers. Three days after the floods receded, Biswas and villagers voluntarily took a week to clean the mud off of the furniture, walls and floors. There was no direct relief fund from Assam’s Disaster Management Flood team, Huessein said. “Unless the school is completely washed away, we will not get funding,” he added.

The school received Rs. 25,000  ($300) from the government, an annual deposit given to the school to purchase posters, books and other commodities beneficial to the school. The money was just enough to purchase large wooden desks and classroom benches, office furniture and repaint the damaged walls, Biswas said.

Rinjumoni Bharali Bhuya, the only other full-time teacher working alongside Biswas, said the school has climate education in its curriculum to teach children what to do in cases of floods or other natural disasters

“It’s hard for them to fully understand flood prevention and safety since they are so young,” Bhuya said.

Biswas added that this year, water levels reached up to a foot. Students continue to attend classes and finish their annual exams during extreme weather conditions, with limited electricity in the school.

Assam’s government has taken some measures to ensure students can continue their education in schools, as the state continues to be impacted by the floods.

Assam’s annual State Open School examination that was set to happen on July 3 for all high school level students was suspended because rivers are “flowing above the dangerous mark followed by heavy floods,” a press release by Assam’s Higher Education Council on July 2, said.

Mongabay India has reached out to Ranoj Pegu, Assam’s Cabinet Minister for Education, but had not received a response at the time of publishing.

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay-India. Read the original article here)