Making Sense of Assam Floods

Flooding in Assam:

• Every year, Assam faces several rounds of floods- especially from the rivers Brahmaputra and Barak. Notably, the Brahmaputra basin is one of the most flood-prone in the world. there are some 100 tributaries and sub-tributaries feeding these two rivers.
• About 40% of the state is vulnerable to flooding. This especially affects the lowland areas and the riverine areas. There is a certain pattern to this yearly flooding.
• However, this pattern gets disrupted sometimes- as is the case this year. Though mega-floods are not a novel occurrence in Assam, they have no standard pattern of recurrence. In the last century, unpredictable mega-floods struck the state in 1934, 1950, 1954, 1955, 196