Assam floods: Guwahati and Delhi both responsible for disaster

Wondering what decadence is? Many of us in Assam are wondering just that. 

When a death toll becomes just a statistic, is that a sign of decadence? Or is it when the ruling political class tries to deflect blame onto others, rather than looking within to see how the deaths of the very people who voted them to power could have been prevented? Or Is it when such a political class gets elected term after term? Or when officers, who live on the tax money of the masses, serve the interests of political masters against the masses themselves? Or perhaps, it is when media houses eschew questions that make the governments uncomfortable. Which one is the better indicator of decadence?" 

The Assam floods were a preventable catastrophe. They were driven by administrative negligence, illegal sand and stone mining, and a blatant disregard for scientific warnings by state authorities. Unlike political speeches, engineering inspections are technical assessments prepared by professionals responsible for river management. Such reports are intended to trigger swift preventive action — not mere archival documents. 

Despite a 2019 Gauhati High Court mandate for a specialised task force and 2022 technical reports highlighting imminent dangers, the state government failed to act, while the central government did not intervene upon being informed. When multiple warnings accumulate over several years, a failure to act becomes a governance issue rather than merely an environmental one. 

There is little doubt that exceptionally heavy rainfall over upstream catchments in Nagaland caused the Dikhow River to swell dramatically, but the government's apathy turned it into a disaster. Nature supplies the rainfall, but governance determines the vulnerability. The tragedy of 2026 is particularly disturbing because the warning signs had been visible for years.

The question today is simple: were these warnings dealt with the urgency they demanded and followed by policies framed?" 

The state government bears the responsibility for river management, mining regulation, disaster preparedness and land-use planning; but while Nagaland is getting blamed, for weak inter-state coordination despite shared river systems, both states and the union government share responsibility for the failure.  

Money can rebuild physical infrastructure, but it cannot restore lost memories or shattered trust. Human confidence takes much longer to reconstruct. 

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A stronger mechanism for coordinating river management between Assam and Nagaland could have addressed upstream activities before they produced devastating downstream consequences. Rivers are dynamic systems. They must be recognised as living ecological entities whose health determines the well-being of entire regions. Every intervention carries consequences, and those impacts often become visible only years later. 

When excessive mining destabilises the upper reaches, the downstream population pays the price. When forests disappear in one region, another experiences greater flooding. When wetlands are destroyed upstream, floodwaters travel faster downstream. Every part of a river is organically linked to every other. India, therefore, urgently needs a comprehensive 'River Health Policy'. 

Rivers are not political territories to be divided between states; they are interconnected ecosystems. Unfortunately, India’s river governance continues to operate through administrative silos. The country requires integrated river basin authorities for all major inter-state rivers. Central agencies possess immense technical expertise through organizations dealing with water resources, disaster management, remote sensing and environmental regulation. 

Technology now offers unprecedented opportunities. Satellite imagery, drone mapping, artificial intelligence, real-time hydrological monitoring and digital twin river-modelling can detect ecological shifts long before they manifest as disasters. What is missing is not technical knowledge, but the political will to act upon it. 

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When a river originates in one state and devastates another, fragmented governance is itself a fundamental part of the problem. The Assam floods should become the catalyst for transforming India's approach to water management. The core lesson here is that a fragmented system utterly failed to respond with the urgency that repeated warnings demanded. Disaster resilience is not built through post-facto compensation packages; it is built through proactive investment before the floods occur. 

Just as physicians examine the entire human body rather than a single isolated organ, governments must periodically conduct comprehensive 'health check-ups' of entire river basins. 

Such examinations should include sediment transport studies, river morphology analysis, biodiversity assessments, satellite monitoring, bank stability reports, groundwater interaction mapping, mining impact studies, vegetation cover audits, and upstream land-use changes. Integrated River Basin Management must become the mandatory norm rather than the exception. The objective should not merely be responding to floods, but actively preventing them. 

Ultimately, the buck stops at the citizens' doorstep because we elect these governments. The dynamic is simple: when we fail to elect a responsible government, we pay the price with our lives and livelihoods. Hence, preventing future disasters is the collective responsibility of all of us who remain non-decayed. We must demand systemic accountability now, or wait until this exact governance apathy engulfs us too. 

The author is an alumnus of IIT-BHU, IIT-Madras and London School of Economics, a writer, and a documentary filmmaker