Floods in Assam, India, killed more than 100 people, destroyed 2,700 villages and displaced 700,000 after intense rain between July 18 and July 20. The state government said 1.2 million people were affected overall.
The devastation was concentrated in eastern Assam, or Upper Assam, after heavy rainfall in neighbouring Nagaland’s Naga Hills swelled rivers flowing downstream. Most floodwaters have since receded, but some families are still searching for missing relatives and homes and rice fields have been destroyed.
What happened in Sivasagar district
On July 19 at about 11am, rising water from the Dikhow River surged into a bamboo-and-mud home in Sivasagar district. Debiram Panika said his wife, Dipika, and their four-year-old daughter, Radhika, were swept away during a video call. Radhika’s body had not been found when the account was published; Panika’s 10-year-old daughter, Ridhika, survived after holding onto a bamboo bush and being rescued by local people.
Villages along the Dikhow were left covered in debris, including tree trunks carried down from the surrounding hills. Rice fields, a major source of livelihood, were washed away. Residents sheltered on the roofs of concrete homes, while volunteers used seven boats to rescue people in two villages over two days and nights.
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How the flooding spread
Incessant rain between July 18 and July 20 submerged parts of Assam and neighbouring Nagaland. Several Nagaland districts bordering Upper Assam also experienced landslides, sending intense runoff into rivers originating in the Naga Hills and causing destruction downstream.
The flooding killed two friends, Reihana Ahmed and Ratul Swarna, in Simaluguri village after Swarna entered the torrent while trying to save Ahmed. Their deaths were among the human losses described in affected Sivasagar communities.
Dispute over the causes
Officials and residents disagree over how much human activity contributed to the disaster. Sivasagar legislator Debabrata Saikia blamed illegal stone and sand excavation along the Dikhow and accused Assam’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party of allowing it. Researcher Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman said mining had damaged the riverbed’s ability to withstand high flows, while a 2022 official document cited mining as a possible factor in large-scale downstream floods.
Nagaland’s Mon district deputy commissioner, Wennyei Konyak, acknowledged the possibility of illegal mining but rejected mining as the cause of the flood and pointed to the force of nature. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma attributed the Upper Assam flooding to excessive rainfall in Nagaland, while cabinet minister Ranoj Pegu linked the deluge to erratic rainfall associated with climate change. The source report said senior district and state officials did not respond to questions about allegations of unchecked coal mining.
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