Covid forced them out of cities, now the Bramhaputra is forcing them to move homes in Assam

Lakhs of people have returned to Assam, where their families live in tin houses in floodplains and have to keep moving due to flooding.

Residents of a remote area of Dhubri, a district in Assam, travel on boats to reach their houses. The flooded areas through which the boats traverse are paddy fields | Yimkumla Longkumer | ThePrint

Dhubri: Lakhs of migrants were left in the lurch, with no jobs or incomes when lockdown was imposed end of March with a just a few hours of warning.

Since then, more than 2.85 lakh people, significantly migrant workers, returned to Assam from across India until 27 June, and this figure does not include those returning from other northeastern states.

During this time, more tragedy struck the state when heavy rains flooded the region, inundating crop lands. Families of several of these migrants now live in makeshift tin houses in the floodplains around the Brahmaputra river, known as char areas.

They struggle to make ends meet as their farmlands keep getting submerged and they have to keep moving from one char to another.

ThePrint’s Angana Chakrabarti and Yimkumla Longkumer travelled to a remote area of the district of Dhubri to meet the families of some of these migrant workers.

With the Brahmaputra river flowing through it, Assam has long dealt with the problem of floods. In 2019, floods affected over 52.59 lakh people across 30 districts and 1.63 lakh hectares of crop area | Angana Chakrabarti | ThePrint

Thousands of families in Assam live in makeshift tin houses and are constantly forced to move because of the floods. Around 4,000 such chawls exist in the state | Angana Chakrabarti | ThePrint

The family of a migrant worker that lives in a tin house in a remote part of Assam’s Dhubri district known as Nayeralga Part II. The only way to access their house is by a 40-minute boat ride from the nearby town of Bilasipara | Yimkumla Longkumer | ThePrint

Nayer Alga Part II, a remote area of Assam’s Dhubri district, remains flooded for most of the year due to massive erosion caused by the Brahmaputra river. Residents here are forced to travel by boat to access work | Angana Chakrabarti | ThePrint

Farmers in Assam’s Dhubri district have to wade through waters to save their paddy crops during the flood season | Angana Chakrabarti | ThePrint

Residents of the char areas use long wooden boats to go to and from their houses | Yimkumla Longkumer | ThePrint