







































Ecology, Economy, and Society–the INSEE Journal 6(2): 121-145, July 2023 

RESEARCH PAPER 

The Political Ecology of an Environmental Crisis in 
the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam 

Mitul Baruah* 

The concept of progress is to be grounded in the idea of the catastrophe. 
That things “just go on” is the catastrophe. It is not that which is 
approaching but that which is. 

―Walter Benjamin, Central Park 
(1985 [1939], 50) 

Abstract: Political ecology as a framework for studying nature–society relations has 
come a long way since the 1980s, both in terms of its thematic canvas as well as 
theoretical robustness. Research in political ecology on hazards on the other hand 
has not grown as impressively, even though humanity is witnessing increased risks 
and disasters in the Anthropocene. Indeed, disasters are no longer “extreme events” 
and have come to be regarded as normal occurrences. This paper delves deeper into 
the question of the political ecology of hazards and vulnerability by focusing on a 
case study from Majuli river island in India’s northeast. It critically investigates the 
twin disasters of flooding and riverbank erosion in Majuli by paying attention to the 
role of the biophysical features of the Brahmaputra river system as well as the 
political economic forces at play, with a special focus on the role of the state. The 
paper draws on fieldwork conducted in Majuli over several years. It foregrounds the 
role of the state in the reproduction of the Majuli hazardscape and calls for a nuanced, 
disaggregated analysis of the postcolonial disastrous state. 

Keywords: Brahmaputra valley, Majuli, Hazardscape, Flood, Riverbank erosion, 
Disaster, Political ecology, The State. 

1. INTRODUCTION 

This article presents a political ecological analysis of a disaster in Assam. The 
relationship between the fields of political ecology and hazards research is 
deep-rooted, particularly in the anglophone world. Some of the foundational 
work in political ecology critically engaged with questions of hazards and 

 
* Assistant Professor of Sociology/Anthropology and Environmental Studies, Ashoka 

University, Haryana, India. mitul.baruah@ashoka.edu.in.  

Copyright © Baruah 2023. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © NonCommercial 

4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.1054  

mailto:mitul.baruah@ashoka.edu.in
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.1054


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [122] 

 

 

vulnerability (Blaikie 1985; Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Watts 1983a, 1983b). 
This body of work showed how far from being “natural”, disasters had a 
social calculus. It located disasters within larger political economic contexts 
and examined them from a historical materialist perspective. Recent 
scholarship on hazards has engaged more directly with frameworks of 
political ecology (Mustafa 2005; Oliver-Smith 2004; Pelling 2012; Sultana 
2010, among others). However, the scholarship on hazards and vulnerability 
remains inadequate, lacking critical perspectives on several important areas, 
even as the environmental crises grow bigger in the Anthropocene. One such 
area is the role of the state, and as this article demonstrates, a critical political 
ecological approach can help us gain deeper insights into the relationships 
between disasters and the state.    

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Majuli river island in Assam, 
this paper critically investigates the role of the state in the reproduction of 
disaster and vulnerability, and in doing so, it attempts to re-theorize the 
postcolonial state in the specific context of hazardous geographies. Located 
in the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra, surrounded by the mighty river on 
the south and the Subansiri on the north, Majuli is one of the largest river 
islands in the world. The island is predominantly rural and is home to over 
1,60,000 people belonging to diverse ethnic groups. Majuli is also the nerve 
centre of the satras, medieval-era Vaishnavite monasteries, that have 
significantly influenced the sociocultural and spiritual landscape of Assam.

Historian Arupjyoti Saikia (2019, 25) describes Majuli as “the best illustration 
of the extreme instability and volatility” of the Brahmaputra river system, 
characterized by complex geological, geomorphological, and hydrological 
processes. What is now a river island was once part of the land formation on 
the southern bank of the Brahmaputra. A series of geological processes and 
the unique fluvial dynamics of the Brahmaputra river led to the formation of 
this river island (Saikia 2019). Majuli consists of a large, spindle-shaped 
landmass and dozens of smaller islands, locally known as chaporis or chars. The 
former represents a remnant floodplain—a relic island—that developed due 
to a process of sudden channel diversion and a branching of the 
Brahmaputra, triggered by tectonic activities and associated mega flood 
events that took place in the early part of the eighteenth century (Baruah 
2022). The chaporis on the other hand are products of the fluvial dynamics of 
the river. It is important to note that the Brahmaputra is the second largest 
sediment-laden river in the world, next only to the Yellow River in China 
(Goswami 1985). Roughly 70% of the sediment carried by the Brahmaputra 



[123] Baruah 

 

is retained in its channel (Goswami 1985),1 causing the rise of riverbeds and 
the formation of riverine islands throughout its course (see Figure 1). These 
chaporis are “hybrid environments” (Lahiri-Dutt 2014a; also see Lahiri-Dutt 
2014b; Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta 2013) or “fluidscapes” (Mukherjee and 
Ghosh 2020), part water and part land, and are constantly in a flux—floating, 
sinking, and reappearing. Such mid-channel landforms are characteristic of 
the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna system (Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta 2013). 
In Majuli, these are lived-in geographies, often home to people who were 
forced out of the main island by flood and erosion. They have worked to 
develop an agrarian economy in these volatile landscapes, in the middle of 
the mighty Brahmaputra. 

Figure 1: Map of Majuli  

 

Source: Map prepared by Joe Stoll, Syracuse University Cartography Lab, the author 
in 2015.   

Over the years, the island has gone through massive transformations due to 
the twin processes of flooding and riverbank erosion. From a landmass of 
roughly 1,255 sq km in 1901, Majuli has reduced to about 421 sq km today 
(Sarma and Phukan 2004). In the process, over 10,000 families have been 
rendered homeless within the island, while many families have migrated to 
other parts of Assam. The volatility of the Brahmaputra, as mentioned above, 

 
1 This is due to the weight of the sediments as well as the declining velocity of water after it 
leaves the Himalayan region and flows through the plains of Assam (cf. Lahiri-Dutt and 
Samanta 2013, 31). 



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and a highly potent South Asian monsoonal regime are critical factors behind 
the flooding and erosion in Majuli and the Brahmaputra valley as a whole. 
The sandy soil along the riverbanks is particularly erosion-prone (Sarma and 
Phukan 2004). Furthermore, the formation of new islands in the upper 
reaches of the Brahmaputra in recent years has impacted the flow regime of 
the river downstream, thereby accelerating processes of erosion in places like 
Majuli (Lahiri and Sinha 2014). For instance, a roughly 300 sq km island by 
the name Dibru-Saikhowa has come up between Dibrugarh and Tinsukia 
upstream, with potentially dangerous implications for Majuli and other places 
downstream (Lahiri and Sinha 2014). However, as this paper contends, it is 
the interventions, or the lack thereof, by the state that have rendered the twin 
processes of flooding and erosion in Assam far more disastrous. The paper 
undertakes a critical investigation into the role of the state in the reproduction 
of disaster and vulnerability in Majuli. 

The paper is divided into four sections. Section 2 presents an in-depth 
examination of the Majuli hazardscape. It begins with a historical overview 
of flood and erosion control approaches in Assam, followed by a discussion 
on how hydraulic infrastructural elements, such as the embankments, have 
reproduced vulnerability in the Majuli landscape. Section 3 unpacks the 
“disastrous state” in Majuli by looking closely at some of the forces behind 
the specific functioning of the state. This section presents rich ethnographic 
details to show the nature and logic of the everyday state in action in Majuli. 
Overall, the paper attempts to enrich the political ecology scholarship on 
hazards as well as research in state theorizations.  

2. THE PRODUCTION OF A HAZARDSCAPE2 

As we sat on the verandah of Mrigen Kutum’s house in Sumoimari village, 
located barely 100 meters away from the river, all we could see were a fleet 
of tractors, JCB excavators, dumper trucks, and rollers, deployed by the 
Brahmaputra Board for the construction of hydraulic infrastructures to check 
riverbank erosion. We could see boulder spurs, geo-bags, geo-mattresses, and 
rows of reinforced cement concrete (RCC) porcupines, but not the river. In 
Kutum’s description, the river has been turned into a “heavily bandaged 
wound” by these infrastructures. Most Sumoimari households are located on 
the riverside, that is, outside the embankment, while a small section is in the 

 
2 A hazardscape is an analytical framework that explains hazardous geographies as co-
produced by the material processes of vulnerability and discursive formation, that is, how these 
geographies are “viewed, constructed, and reproduced by the expert/technocratic discourses 
about them” (Mustafa 2005, 566). Drawing on the idea of “landscape” in cultural geography, 
this concept further highlights how hazardous geographies are not just sites of vulnerability 
and suffering, but they also open up spaces for contestations and struggles over wider social 
justice (Mustafa 2005). 



[125] Baruah 

 

countryside or inside the embankment. It made a huge difference as to which 
side of the embankment one lived, but I will return to this subject later. For 
septuagenarian Kutum who has lived all his life in Sumoimari, the village has 
changed enormously. He attributed most of these transformations to the 
flood and erosion control measures—not the disasters themselves—that the 
state has adopted over the years. Kutum was particularly critical of the 
embankments:    

We had our best time before the mathauris (embankment) were built. 
Everything used to be ubhainadi (abundant): food grains, fish, and all other 
essentials. But ever since the embankments came up, our fields stopped 
receiving timely water and alluvium. This has destroyed our agriculture. The 
embankments have also severed our ponds and beels from the river, thus 
depriving them of both freshwater and fish. Moreover, floods now wreak 
havoc on the island, as they are mostly flash floods occurring due to 
embankment breaching, which was not the case earlier. Before, the 
floodwater used to come in gracefully and recede sooner. 

Kutum grew up in a Majuli of the pre-embankment era when the 
Brahmaputra and the Subansiri flowed through the island freely every year 
during the monsoon, nourishing its agricultural fields and replenishing the 
wetlands. Back then, the Tuni river, a natural anabranch of the Brahmaputra, 
also traversed the island vigorously, enriching its biodiversity. Although the 
embankment that runs through Sumoimari now was constructed in the mid-
1990s, the village has witnessed the impacts of embankments since the late 
1950s, when the first set were built in Majuli. For Mrigen Kutum, the 
embankments and the cognate infrastructure were thus more than just a set 
of infrastructural elements; they were a force, as it were, that reshaped his 
world in front of his eyes. Hence his strong critique of these interventions, 
and in it, he was not alone. As I travelled the length and breadth of the island 
interacting with people from different walks of life, I kept hearing story after 
story about the devastating impact of embankments, spurs, and other such 
infrastructural elements on people’s lives and local ecologies. Sometimes, 
people shared wisdom about the river and its intricate ecologies that far 
surpassed what the sophisticated fields of hydrology and river engineering 
can tell us. For instance, on one occasion, an elderly person in Sumoimari 
told me the following: 

Nadikhon bor komal. Moromere subo lage. (The river is very delicate. It should 
be touched with love.).  

I was awestruck by the profundity of this seemingly simple statement. Unlike 
the world of river engineering that considers rivers as entities that can be 
harnessed, tamed, and altered at will, this remark by the villager reminds us 
of the living entity that a river is—a delicate being that requires love, not 



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techno-engineering. How should we really touch a river? It is this question 
of the touch that I turn to now, first by looking at the flood and erosion 
control in Assam historically.  

2.1 A Brief History of Flood and Erosion Control in the Brahmaputra 
Valley 

In Assam, “flood control” has always been a top-down process. Historically, 
the Assamese peasantry did not consider a flood a calamity; instead, they 
welcomed it and relied heavily on annual flooding for their livelihood. The 
state, on the other hand, has always viewed a flood as a hazard that needs to 
be controlled. Flood control as a systematic state intervention in Assam dates 
back to the Ahom period, although centralized management of water 
resources in general far preceded the Ahoms (Saikia 2019).3 It was during the 
reign of Suhungmung (also known as the Dihingia Raja, after the Dihing 
river) in the sixteenth century that widespread embankments or bunds were 
built for flood control, and subsequent Ahom rulers expanded this initiative. 
The embankments allowed the Ahom state to expand wet rice cultivation 
into the Brahmaputra floodplains (Guha 1967). Flood control, however, 
gained further momentum during the colonial period.4 As early as 1827, only 
a year after the British takeover of Assam from the Burmese,5 David Scott, 
the East India Company’s first commissioner of Assam, proposed that part 
of the revenue collected from Assam be allocated for flood control measures, 
such as embankments (Barooah 1970, 101). Thus, very early on, the 
Company administration began investing large amounts of money in 
repairing the Ahom era bunds, which they believed to be highly dilapidated. 
Work of such scale demanded a considerable labour force, and the Company 
ensured that through an unprecedented mobilization of the Assamese 
peasantry who did not have a choice but to follow the instructions. In 
addition to such large-scale repair work, the Company also undertook the 
construction of new embankments and the excavation of canals and ditches 
along the Brahmaputra and its tributaries (see Figure 2). 

For the British, it was imperative to have complete control over the 
Brahmaputra and its tributaries in order to reclaim the floodplains and 
maximize land revenue. This was seen as crucial to continuing the 

 
3 The Ahoms, descendents of the Shan branch of the Tai or Thai family of South-East Asia, 
ruled in Assam for a long period of 600 years, from 1228 to 1826. The legacy of the Ahom 
period is still prominent in all spheres of Assamese society and culture. For more details about 
the Ahom dynasty and their contribution to Assam, see Baruah (1985). 
4 This was the case in the country as a whole. See, for instance, D’Souza (2006), Mishra (1997). 
5 As per the terms of the Treaty of Yandabo, signed between the British East India Company 
and the Burmese on February 24, 1826, the Burmese agreed to cede Assam, along with a few 
other territories, to the British. This was the beginning of the colonization of Assam. 



[127] Baruah 

 

accumulation cycle of colonial capital. Henry Cotton, the chief commissioner 
of Assam, was explicit about the need to harness the vast riverine tracts in 
Assam and put them to “productive” use:  

[T]he millions of acres of culturable land now lying waste represent millions 
of rupees which might be dug out of the soil but are now allowed to lie 
useless like the talent wrapped in a napkin (Cotton 1897, cited in Saikia 
2013, 11). 

Figure 2: Drone Footage of a Section of an Embankment in Salmora, Majuli  

 

Source: Ron Bezbaruah and the author 

The case of Assam was emblematic of a much deeper phenomenon: the 
colonial fetishization of flood control. As Rohan D’Souza (2006) has shown, 
similar processes were already underway in Bengal and the Orissa delta. In its 
pursuit of endless capital accumulation, the colonial administration had to 
find ways to secure land revenue from “the river’s temperamental 
depredations” (D’Souza 2006, 101). Hence, “the idea of running protective 
embankments to separate field from river” became an “administrative fetish” 
for the colonial state (D’Souza 2006, 101). 

It is important to note that up to the late nineteenth century, the Assamese 
peasantry viewed flooding as largely beneficial, and instances of catastrophic 
floods were also rare. In fact, the Government of India conducted a detailed 
inquiry in 1893 on the subject of flooding and embankments in Assam, which 
established that the demand from the peasantry was overwhelmingly for 



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localized flood-control measures, such as the restoration of existing natural 
drainage systems, and not for embankments (Saikia 2019, 268).  

For the colonial state, however, the vast riverine tracts of the Brahmaputra 
valley were extremely suitable for jute cultivation. Thus, within a short period 
of time, floodplain reclamation for jute cultivation became rampant, and in 
the process, the valley was radically reconfigured. By the early twentieth 
century, jute was the highest export earner for the Government of India, and 
Assam was second only to Bengal in jute production. The massive conversion 
of the fragile riverine tracts into jute fields led to the reworking of their 
ecologies, rendering them highly vulnerable to floods and erosion. “Flood” 
itself acquired a new meaning now since flood-induced damage became much 
more visible when jute fields were destroyed (Saikia 2013). Hence, 
embankments gained unprecedented salience in the colonial government’s 
efforts to control floods in the valley in the twentieth century.  

Fast forward to the post-independence era. The historic 1950 earthquake 
with a magnitude of 8.7 on the Richter scale had a catastrophic impact on the 
Brahmaputra valley landscape. Suddenly, the riverbeds rose significantly, by 
several metres in some places; some old, iconic channels disappeared and 
were replaced by new ones; landslides and sedimentation gained 
unprecedented momentum; and the chapori geographies in the belly of the 
river were drastically altered. It was as if the Brahmaputra riverscape had 
undergone a complete overhauling all of a sudden. Riverbank erosion, too, 
attained a different scale after this mega event. Since 1950, Assam has lost 
over 400,000 hectares of land to riverbank erosion, which amounts to roughly 
7.5% of the state’s total geographical area.6 This has also led to significant 
widening of the Brahmaputra, up to 15 km in some places (Goswami 1985). 
Such massive reconfiguration of the river changed the nature of flooding and 
erosion in the valley forever. The mega floods that followed the 1950 
earthquake—the 1952 and 1954 floods—wreaked havoc all over Assam. In 
its desperation to find a solution to the flood crisis the state was facing, the 
Assam government enacted the Assam Embankment and Drainage Act, 
1953, which came into force in 1954, paving the way for the rapid 
proliferation of embankments throughout the state. Within two decades of 
the execution of this act, the Assamese state built over 4,500 kms of 
embankment, the third largest in the country at that time. 

Much as in the Brahmaputra valley as a whole, in Majuli, too, the 
embankments have been at the heart of the state’s flood and erosion control 
measures. As per Assamese chronicles (Tamuli-Phukan 1944), the first 

 
6 This information was taken from the website of the Ministry of Water Resources, 
Government of Assam (https://waterresources.assam.gov.in/portlets/flood-management).  

https://waterresources.assam.gov.in/portlets/flood-management


[129] Baruah 

 

embankment in Majuli dates to the Ahom king Pratap Singha (1603–1641), 
also known as Burha Raja or the old king. It was during his reign that an 
embankment was constructed at Meragarh,7 near present day Bongaon (see 
Figure 1), connecting the northern and southern borders of his kingdom 
(Nath 2009, 255). Remnants of the Meragarh embankment are still present, 
but this remained the only embankment in Majuli for a long time. It was only 
after independence that the number of embankments started increasing. Built 
in 1952–1953, the 34.5-km Haldhibari–Bessamora dyke along the 
Brahmaputra was the first one on the island in the post-independence era. A 
series of embankments came up after that, both along the Brahmaputra and 
the Subansiri, leaving the island with a wide network of these structures (see 
Figure 3). Today, the island is surrounded by over 115 km of embankment. 
Although most of them were built within the first three decades of 
independence, construction and repair work continued throughout the 
twentieth century. In fact, as recently as 2013, a proposal was submitted by 
the Majuli Division of the Water Resources Department (WRD) to the 
Central Water Commission (CWC), New Delhi, for a massive reinforcement 
of embankments on the northern bank of the island. Thus, there seems to be 
no stopping the state’s fetish for embankments. 

The following statement by a high-ranking engineer in the WRD best echoes 
the state’s obsession with embankments: 

I would argue that there are actually two Assams: one before the 1950 
earthquake and one after. The post-1950 Assam owes its sanskriti and 
sabhyata (culture and civilization) to the embankments, and by extension, 
the Water Resources Department. Had it not been for the embankments 
along the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, the post-1950 Assam would have 
been a miserable landscape—flooded, fragmented, and wild. […] The 

embankments have been and will be the savior of modern Assam.  

Such a statement may appear bizarre, but the truth is that this is the dominant 
sentiment within the agency. During my fieldwork, I spoke with WRD 
officials from different levels—from the chief engineer to the junior engineer 
(JE) at the field level—and I never came across anyone denouncing the 
embankments. 

Previously, the WRD was responsible for both flood and erosion control in 
Majuli. However, faced with popular discontent with the agency due to its 
failure in preventing erosion in the late 1990s, the Assam government was 
compelled to re-evaluate its capacity to handle the alarming rate of erosion in 

 
7 The word garh means a bund or an embankment. Near Meragarh, one can find 
more Ahom era relics, such as the iconic Rawnapar pukhuri, a large tank, which is 
also an important tourist attraction today. 



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Majuli. In 1999, the government approached the Board, a statutory body 
under the Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India, to intervene 
in the protection of Majuli from riverbank erosion. Since then, the Board has 
been the main agency addressing the crisis of riverbank erosion in Majuli. 
The Board started implementing its three-phased scheme, Protection of Majuli 
Island from Floods and Erosion, in 2005. What is interesting about this scheme 
is that the embankments remained one of the key interventions. Even though 
the Board proposed a range of other measures, such as permeable RCC 
porcupine screens and dampeners, boulder spurs, and sand-filled geo-bags 
and geo-mattresses, the raising and strengthening of embankments still 
remained a dominant intervention. Such a “tech-fix approach” (Wisner et al. 
2004, 230) has rarely proven to be effective in controlling flood and erosion 
in Majuli. Rather, it has worsened these disasters, a phenomenon that Wisner 
et al. (2004, 206) described as the “the paradox of flood control”. 

Figure 3: A Map of Embankments in Majuli  

 

Source: The Water Resources Department, Majuli Division (with permission). 

2.2 Infrastructures and Vulnerability 

When I arrived in Majuli in late 2012 to begin my fieldwork, the island was 
still recovering from a flood that had caused devastation earlier that year. 
Behind this catastrophic flooding was one simple factor: the breaching of 
embankments. They were breached in as many as five different places 



[131] Baruah 

 

throughout the island, catching the rural population off-guard and causing an 
instant deluge. Sonowal Kachari village, located on the easternmost corner 
of the island, was one of the worst-affected villages in the whole of Majuli. 
The embankment breached right in front of this village causing havoc. 
Several families lost their homes and cattle overnight. Tuniram Sonowal, one 
of those who suffered losses, said:  

Ghar to bar jautijugia koi banai loishilu. Eku norol, ratir bhitorot marubhumi 
hoi gol. (I had built my house as if it would last forever. But nothing 
remained, and it all turned into a desert overnight.).  

Sonowal seemed to have used the word “desert” both literally and 
figuratively. As the embankment breached, the river deposited huge loads of 
sand instantly all over the village, giving it the appearance of a desert. At the 
same time, “desert” here also symbolizes loss, barrenness. Sonowal went on 
to tell me how he had built a large house with as many as 75 poka khutas 
(concrete pillars), which got washed away overnight, along with roughly five 
dozen of his cattle. For rural families like Sonowal’s, a loss of this magnitude 
is irrecoverable. For months following this flood, his family lived in a 
makeshift tent, and it was only about a year later that they rebuilt their home, 
which was obviously not comparable to their previous house.  

The embankments are built to control floods, but they are prone to 
breaching, leaking, and toppling. Whenever an embankment is breached, 
there is total mayhem. Thus, for people living in flood-prone areas, the 
embankments are a greater cause of worry than the flood itself. Between 1969 
and 2012, for instance, the island experienced 13 mega flood events, while 
low-intensity floods continued to affect the riverside villages every year, 
sometimes multiple times a year.8 During this period, the island has also lost 
huge landmasses to riverbank erosion. The old Ahatguri mouza (revenue 
block) in lower Majuli has almost entirely disappeared, the chaporis in the 
middle of the river are constantly being eroded, and a multitude of families 
have been rendered homeless on the island. The state’s techno-fix approach 
to disasters, which often finds expression in the form of embankments and 
cognate infrastructural elements, has been particularly responsible for these 
devastations on the Majuli landscape (Figures 4).  

In Majuli, the embankments have produced a distinct spatiality of risk and 
vulnerability. They have divided the island into two distinct zones: countryside 
versus riverside, also known as the bhitor anchal and bahir anchal —that is, inside 
and outside region (see Figure 2). The countryside represents the largest and 

 
8 This information is based on a household survey that I conducted in 110 
households across three villages in Majuli in 2013–2014. 



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the more prosperous part of the island. It has some of the more productive 
agricultural lands, particularly suitable for paddy cultivation, and it also has a 
significant share of the island’s wetlands. The countryside is also the business 
and administrative hub of the island. The riverside area is relatively less 
prosperous and has poorer infrastructure. It is also densely populated, with a 
predominance of the missing community. This region also includes the 
chaporis, that is, the more ephemeral parts of Majuli. Far from preventing 
floods and erosion, the embankments have rendered both these spaces much 
more vulnerable than before, and in distinct ways. 

Figure 4: Riverbank Erosion Ravaging Part of Salmora Village in Majuli 

 

Source: Author 

Because of the embankments, the countryside does not experience annual 
flooding anymore, which may have given the population there a sense of 
security. This is, however, a false sense of security. In fact, the embankments 
have threatened the safety and security of the countryside in several ways. 

First, embankment breaching has become far too common in Majuli, 
resulting in disastrous floods, whenever they occur. Second, the 
embankments have blocked the natural inlets and outlets for water on the 
island. As a result, the countryside now faces a severe crisis of waterlogging 
post-monsoon every year, which leads to a variety of problems, such as 
stagnant wetlands with depleted fish stock, drinking water contamination, 
and the spread of malaria and water-borne diseases. Third, due to the 



[133] Baruah 

 

embankments, the fields in the countryside are now deprived of annual 
alluvium (polosh) that floodwater used to bring in earlier. It is not surprising 
that the farmers in the countryside are increasingly applying chemical 
fertilizers and pesticides in their fields, with potentially dangerous 
implications in the long run. 

Figure 5: Flood as an Everyday Phenomenon in Areas Outside Embankments  

  

Source: Author 

In the riverside areas, conversely, the embankments have created a condition 
of permanent flooding (see Figure 5). During the monsoon, the Brahmaputra 
and its tributaries naturally swell up, more so now as the embankments have 
narrowed the course of the rivers. Before the embankments were built, this 
water was distributed throughout the island, but now it cannot enter the 
countryside unless an embankment is breached. As a result, the riverside 
remains largely submerged during and long after the monsoon. With 
farmlands and grazing lands inundated for most of the year, people in the 
riverside face serious livelihood challenges. The effects of such low-intensity, 
everyday flooding in the riverside areas are many. For instance, tube wells in most 
riverside villages get submerged, causing an acute shortage of potable water. 
In addition to the health risks, the potable water crisis puts an extra burden 
on womenfolk, exposing them to greater risks. Similarly, toilets in many rural 
households get submerged, which, too, has serious health- and gender-



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specific implications (Baruah 2022). Furthermore, the damage caused to the 
roads and bridges in the island’s interior affects people’s mobility, thereby 
rendering day-to-day activities extremely difficult. Yet the state seems to view 
such conditions as the norm and does not make any effort to address them. 
The people are largely left to fend for themselves. Hemanta Das, a resident 
of Dakhinpat Kaibarta village, described the living conditions in the riverside 
areas as follows: 

We are victims of the embankment in multiple ways. Unlike the bhitor 
anchal, our areas are flooded every year, and for a longer duration. Being a 
nadi-kaxoriya gaon (riverside village), people in our village own very little 
land, which, too, is often inundated and not suitable for agriculture. […] 
Much more upsetting to me is the fact that we now have to live with these 
huge ponds right in front of our houses, which were dug for the purpose 
of building and repairing the embankment. In the monsoon, these ponds 
usually overflow, and the entire area becomes like a drain. At that time, we 
can’t even access the road and it is a particularly dangerous situation for our 
kids. Basically, we are squeezed between the river and a drain. 

Figure 6: A Boulder Spur in Sumoimari Village, Majuli  

 

Source: Author 

The riverside communities thus have to endure vulnerabilities of many kinds 
induced by the embankments. As Hemanta’s account makes abundantly 



[135] Baruah 

 

clear, life in the riverside zone is miserable irrespective of flood or erosion—
they are “squeezed between the river and a drain”. For the chapori dwellers, it 
is worse. By confining the courses of such a massively sediment-laden river, 
the embankments have added to the volatility of the Brahmaputra and its 
sediment dynamics downstream. In the process, the geographies of the 
chaporis have been rendered much more ephemeral, and life there is highly 
uncertain. People in these chaporis are constantly on the move, in search of a 
more secure place and a home. 

The inventory of hydraulic infrastructure in Majuli is elaborate. A whole 
range of infrastructural elements—earthen, concrete, metallic, and other 
mixed—have proliferated in Majuli over the past few decades. Let me at this 
point briefly highlight the case of two more of these—the boulder spurs and 
the RCC porcupines (see Figure 6 and Figure 7)—and how they, too, have 
worsened the crises instead of solving them. 

Spurs or groynes are anti-erosion measures constructed transverse to the 
river flow and extend from the bank into the river. The spurs are meant to 
keep the flow of the river away from the erosion-prone bank and are 
supported by a launching apron to prevent scouring under the water and the 
consequent toppling of the structure.9 The construction materials and design 
of a spur can vary depending on whether it is permeable or not. In India, the 
construction of spurs as a bank revetment measure dates back to the Raj. 
D’Souza (2006, 124), for instance, talks about a stone spur—the Naraj 
Spur—constructed along the Mahanadi river in Orissa in 1856–1863, which, 
“it was hoped, would restore the vitality of the Mahanadi by redirecting the 
waters back into its main channel”. However, as D’Souza (2006, 124) noted, 
“[Within] a few years of operation, it became evident that the Naraj Spur 
failed to be the elegant solution. The delta, thus, despite the surgical stab of 
a spur into its clotted head remained rancorous and in mourning.” Later, the 
Naraj Spur was converted into a barrage. In Majuli, the spurs are a relatively 
recent intervention. The Board proposed building five boulder spurs in 
Majuli as part of its scheme. The construction of these spurs began in 2009–
2010 under phase II and phase III of its scheme. At the time of this research, 
the work was still ongoing. Given that they have not been completed yet, it 
may be too early to write an obituary of these spurs, but there are enough 
early signs to doubt their efficacy. For instance, during the 2012 flood, spurs 
no. 1, 2, and 3, located between Salmora and Afalamukh on the southern tip 
of the island, were partially toppled even as they were under construction. 
Boulders from these spurs were washed away, causing havoc in the 

 
9 See the 2012 Handbook of the Central Water Commission, Government of India, for more technical 
details about spurs as well as various other flood-control and anti-erosion measures. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [136] 

 

 

neighbouring villages.10 Because of these risks, some people in the riverside 
villages referred to the spurs as “mrityubaan” (weapons of death). Not only 
are the spurs unlikely to protect the island from erosion, but they may also 
render the downstream areas as well as the riverbanks on the other side much 
more susceptible to erosion, since the river now hits these places with far 
greater force. 

Figure 7: RCC Porcupines in the River near Dakhinpat Village, Majuli  

 

Source: Author 

RCC porcupines are another widely used intervention by the Board in Majuli. 
First introduced in 2004 as part of the Board’s “immediate measures” to 
check erosion, they saw massive scaling up in the next decade. An RCC 
porcupine is a prismatic-type permeable structure, comprising six RCC 
columns, joined together with iron nuts and bolts to form a tetrahedral frame. 
The individual units are connected using wire rope and placed on the ground 
in such a way that they are able to withstand the force and intensity of flow, 
especially during the monsoon. The primary function of these structures is 
to reduce the velocity of the flow along the bank by posing a partial 
obstruction to the flow and thereby inducing sediment deposition. They are 

 
10 This information is based on my field observations and interaction with several families, in 
all three sites, that were affected by the toppling of the spurs. 



[137] Baruah 

 

generally laid in different forms—as screens, spurs, and dampeners. In India, 
RCC porcupines have been deployed both in the Brahmaputra and the 
Ganges. Thus far, there have been no systematic studies on the efficacy of 
these structures. In Majuli, too, one will have to wait to see the outcome of 
these measures. 

According to the Board, it has reclaimed about 18 sq km of land in Majuli 
between 2004 and 2011, largely due to siltation caused by the RCC 
porcupines (Government of India 2012, 12). The local communities, 
however, seemed to have rejected the RCC porcupines entirely. Salmora 
resident Dulal Bora’s song expressed the general mood on the island about 
RCC porcupines. The song went like this:  

“Porcupine, porcupine 
Kona hahok potan dan…” 
(Porcupine, porcupine/ Giving fake rice to blind ducks…).11 

Many people on the island thought the RCC porcupines were a sheer waste 
of public money, while others complained that these structures obstructed 
navigation and fishing activities. It was perhaps a sign of the widespread 
rejection of these structures that nuts and bolts of RCC porcupines were 
regularly stolen. Sometimes, the entire unit of a porcupine would disappear, 
with the RCC posts finding their way into the black market. 

3. UNPACKING THE DISASTROUS STATE 

It is clear from the above discussion that the state has not been successful in 
protecting Majuli from floods and erosion. Although measures such as 
embankments and cognate infrastructural elements have proliferated on the 
island in the past few decades, they have failed to create a sense of security 
among the riverside communities. The erosion of the island continued 
unabated, and there has not been any let-up in the flood situation either. The 
case of Majuli exemplifies the flood and erosion crises that the Brahmaputra 
valley is facing as a whole. From Rohomoria upstream to south Salmora 
downstream, via Palasbari, Lahorighat, and many other places, the stories of 
devastation and loss due to floods and erosion are endless. Why does the 
state, then, continue to follow the same old colonial approach to tackling 
floods and erosion? In other words, how do we make sense of a state that is 
producing more disasters while trying to control them? 

3.1 Beyond the Accumulation of Capital 

 
11 This retired schoolteacher is locally well-known for his songs, poems, and Assamese literary 

writing in general. His song on the RCC porcupine was a long one, with specific details on 
how the porcupines were a futile intervention by the government. He had composed a number 
of songs and parodies, with a humorous take on various interventions by the state in Majuli. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [138] 

 

 

The relations between (colonial) capitalism and river engineering have been 
a subject of numerous studies globally (Biggs 2012; Colten 2005; Evenden 
2004; Swyngedouw 1999). In India, Rohan D’Souza’s (2006) Drowned and 
Damned: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India remains one of the 
finest historical treatises on flood control during the Raj. Vital to D’Souza’s 
work, focused on the Mahanadi river in Orissa, was locating flood control in 
Orissa within a capitalist political economy that was uniquely colonial. “The 
colonial quest for transforming Indian society”, D’Souza (2006, 14) argued, 
“turned significantly on the need and urgency for instituting capitalist 
property, capitalist social relations, and its production and accumulation 
imperatives, which then inevitably translated into several scales of 
environmental change”. For a colonial state, too determined to transform 
and harness nature as part of its drive for capital accumulation, a flood-
vulnerable landscape was a necessity that required constant interventions and 
transformations. Hence, embankments gave way to canals, which in turn gave 
way to Multi-Purpose River Valley Development (MPRVD), despite repeated 
catastrophes and popular dissent. Arupjyoti Saikia’s (2013, 2019) rich 
historical account of colonial floodplain management in the Brahmaputra 
valley also placed revenue concerns of the empire at the centre. For the colonial 
administration, Saikia argued, the “reclamation” of the Brahmaputra 
floodplains was necessary, as it offered huge potential for cash crop 
cultivation (of jute and tea, in particular). Flood control enabled this land 
reclamation.     

While Saikia’s and D’Souza’s works remain invaluable for our understanding 
of colonial flood control in eastern India, in both these accounts, the 
conceptualization of the state seems rather simplistic. The state in their 
analysis appears to be a unitary entity, driven singularly by its accumulation 
imperative. While this may be true about the colonial state and may also 
explain the postcolonial state to some extent, as a large body of work now 
shows, the state is far from being unitary and state–society relations are much 
more complex and at times arbitrary (Carswell and Neve 2020; Corbridge et 
al. 2005; Ghertner 2017; Glassman and Samatar 1997; Gupta 2012; Sharma 
and Gupta 2006; Truelove 2021). With reference to the postcolonial state in 
northeast India, political scientist Sanjib Baruah (2020, 8) has talked about 
“hybrid political regimes”, which meant a “de facto informal partnership” 
between state and non-state armed actors. In Majuli, where the non-state 
actors include both armed and unarmed groups, the latter consisting of, 
among others, contractors, student unions, the satras, and cronies of political 
leaders, such partnerships are widespread. I have discussed in greater detail 
elsewhere the nexus between engineers, contractors, and politicians in Majuli 
and how that affects processes of environmental governance (Baruah 2022). 



[139] Baruah 

 

Let me now present to you an anecdote from the field to explain the arbitrary 
functioning of the state in Majuli: 

Kai was an influential person in Majuli, a close relative of a political leader 
at that time. His sprawling house in the village was always busy, functioning 
like the de facto office of a few government agencies in Majuli. The day I 
was invited to his home for lunch, the gathering was relatively small—a 
select group of local contractors, a few bureaucrats and engineers, and a 
handful of local elites. I sat quietly, listening to their conversation and 
nodding occasionally with a few words. “The Brahmaputra should be sold 
to China, they would do a much better job of managing it”, said an engineer. 
“All these public protests are sheer waste of time. They should be banned. 
Somebody should eliminate X (referring to an activist)”, said a contractor. 
Their conversation touched on a range of topics. Eventually, an elaborate 
lunch was served—red rice, smoked pork, fish curry, and rice beer.  

Post-lunch, the contractors, the engineers, and Kai sat down with files, 
maps, and other documents in the courtyard. Over the next couple of 
hours, they made a list of several projects in Majuli for next year, under a 
particular department, and the names of contractors against each of these 
projects. In a way, the department’s work plan for the island for the next 
financial year was finalized at this meeting. The contractors present in the 
lunch/meeting received the lion’s share, of course. Although the official 
sanction of these projects will require various procedures, as one of the 
contractors told me, they are “formalities”. “The real sanction”, he added, 
“is what we are doing here now”. A few months later, a protest broke out 
in a village on the easternmost corner of the island over a WRD project. 
This riverside village was devastated by the 2012 flood, as the embankment 
was breached and partially washed away right in front of this village. The 
protest concerned a “retirement bund” on this embankment. As it turned 
out, this was one of the projects that featured in the discussion at Kai’s 
lunch. Given the urgency and the scale of the work, it had been allotted to 
a group of contractors instead of a single contractor. However, the work 
was progressing extremely slowly, and its quality so compromised that the 
village community was worried about another catastrophe in the upcoming 
monsoon. Hence, they took to the streets. In response, high-ranking 
bureaucrats from the WRD headquarters visited the site immediately, and 
the contractors were assigned stricter deadlines to complete the project. But 
most of the contractors were based in Guwahati (Assam’s capital city), busy 
implementing much larger projects elsewhere, and the retirement bund in 
Majuli was the least of their priorities. So, some of them washed their hands 
off quickly by “sub-contracting” the project to other contractors who were 
locally based. As I later found out, this process of sub-contracting made a 
few more rounds. Each time the work was sub-contracted, its quality 
suffered, as the new contractor lacked resources and experience. Three 
years later, this embankment was breached once again, and a similar saga of 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [140] 

 

 

devastation began in several riverside villages all over again. (Baruah 2022: 
78–79) 

This episode gives us a closer look at the functioning of the everyday state in 
Majuli. As we have noticed, the government agency in question did not 
follow due procedure in finalizing its annual work plan. Instead, plans were 
drawn up in an informal, arbitrary manner at the residence of a political 
leader, in the presence of a group of well-connected contractors. Projects 
were allotted arbitrarily to this select group of contractors. So, when it came 
to implementing these projects, the contractors managed to circumvent the 
state easily.  

A second example may help illustrate the hybrid political regime at work in 
Majuli. The non-state actor in this case is an armed group—the United 
Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). Founded in 1979 with the goal of 
liberating Assam from the Union of India, ULFA was a hugely popular force 
in Assam in its early stages.12 In Majuli, the group had a strong popular base 
in the 1980s through the mid-1990s. The swampy, inaccessible geography of 
the island made it the militants’ most preferred base. However, the tragic 
incident of the murder of social activist Sanjoy Ghose in 1997 proved to be 
ULFA’s undoing in Majuli. A well-regarded development professional and 
human rights activist in the country by that point, Ghose came to Majuli in 
1996 as part of the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural 
Development, North East (AVARD-NE).13 AVARD-NE initiated a variety 
of developmental activities in Majuli, and Ghose soon became a household 
name on the island. ULFA, however, suspected Ghose of being a spy for the 
Indian government, and on July 4, 1997, he was abducted in broad daylight 
from a village not too far from the administrative headquarter of Majuli and 
was subsequently killed—his body was never recovered. 

Ghose’s murder had a lasting impact on Majuli. The news of his death was 
picked up by national and international media instantly, and AVARD-NE 
quit Majuli shortly after. This incident gave Majuli such adverse publicity that 
the island remained a prohibited place for NGOs and activists for a long 
time. Thus, the chances of any alternative engagement with the island’s 
myriad challenges, including floods and erosion, seemed to have been nipped 
in the bud. This marked the beginning of ULFA’s loss of popularity on the 

 
12 For a more in-depth understanding of ULFA, see Bhattacharya (2014), Das (1994), and 
Mahanta (2013), among others. Parag Das’s rich body of work, both fiction and non-fiction, 
provide us a critical understanding of the early stage of ULFA and the Assamese society of 
that time. Notable among Das’s work include Sanglot Fenla, roughly translated as Revolution’s 
Army (1993), Swadhinatar Prastab (Proposal for Independence), 1993, and Rastrodrohir Dinalipi 
(A Seditioner’s Diary), 1992. 
13 See Ghose (1998) for a collection of some of Ghose’s writings on Assam. 



[141] Baruah 

 

island. Combined with this incident was the increased state repression of the 
outfit, which not only broke its back, but also took a toll on its popularity, as 
the local population was too terrified to extend support to the militant group. 
It was perhaps under such circumstances, I argue, that ULFA had to change 
its ways of functioning drastically. A force that was once dreaded by corrupt 
officials, politicians, and contractors now started protecting them as long as 
it received a share. Put simply, rampant corruption within government 
agencies—there are innumerable allegations of corruption against both the 
WRD and the Board—has a lot to do with the nature of relations between 
these agencies and various non-state actors. To understand how the state has 
addressed the flood and erosion crises in the valley and why one must pay 
attention to the corrupt nexus between the state and non-state actors and 
how the postcolonial state has been renegotiated and reconfigured through 
these nexuses. 

Furthermore, the island geography of Majuli has also had a role in shaping 
the relations between the state and non-state actors. As an island, 
employment opportunities within Majuli are limited, more so given the 
constraints on people’s everyday commute to the mainland for work. This 
has made the local population highly dependent on the state. The 
“islandness” (Baldacchino 2006) of Majuli has also resulted in strong social 
ties between different sections of the people as well as between government 
officials and the people, thereby affecting the functioning of the state (for 
more on this, see Baruah (2022)). Such mutual interdependence has made it 
generally very difficult for communities to dissent against the state. In a 
nutshell, unpacking the disastrous state in Majuli requires paying attention to 
both the questions of the accumulation imperative of the capitalist state as 
well as the everyday state and its complex relations with various non-state 
actors. 

4. CONCLUSION 

Drawing on the case study of Majuli, this article presented a political 
ecological analysis of disaster and vulnerability in the Brahmaputra valley. It 
showed how the twin processes of flooding and riverbank erosion have 
reshaped the Majuli landscape, causing tremendous damage to local ecologies 
and livelihoods. In explaining the crises in Majuli, the article paid attention to 
the unique biophysical characteristics of the Brahmaputra river system as well 
as political and economic forces, with a special focus on the role of the state. 

At the heart of the Indian state’s flood and erosion control measures in 
Assam have been the embankments and the cognate hydraulic infrastructure. 
Such an approach first adopted by the colonial state, was carried on by the 
postcolonial state with even greater fervour. Unfortunately, the outcomes 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [142] 

 

 

have been anything but positive. Majuli, for instance, has continued to shrink, 
and flood events, too, remained a recurring phenomenon, thereby increasing 
the vulnerability of the local population. The article shed light on the question 
of what may have been some of the forces driving the state to pursue 
measures that have clearly failed in protecting Majuli, and the Brahmaputra 
valley as a whole. In doing so, the article presented new ways of 
understanding the postcolonial state in disastrous geographies. It showed that 
the idea of capital accumulation alone is inadequate to make sense of the 
postcolonial state. Instead, the capitalist state also needs to be situated within 
the postcolonial specificities of bureaucratic arbitrariness; corruption; 
everyday functioning of government officials, which is sometimes driven by 
communal ties rather than the idea of a “rational” state; and, above all, the 
role of various non-state actors. 

Ethics Statement: I hereby confirm that this study complies with 
requirements of ethical approvals from the institutional ethics committee for 
the conduct of this research. 

Data Availability Statement: The data used to support this research is 
available in a repository and the hyperlinks and persistent identifiers (e.g. 
DOI or accession number) are stated in the paper. 

Conflict of Interest Statement: No potential conflict of interest was 
reported by the author. 

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