Photo by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Over 100 people have died in Assam’s floods this year, with 700,000 displaced and 1.2 million impacted overall as the devastation continues to deepen.
About 2,700 villages have been destroyed, with Sivasagar district in upper Assam among the hardest hit, along with Mon district across the border in Nagaland.
The floods were triggered by heavy rainfall in the Naga Hills between July 18 and 20, which caused sudden surges in tributaries flowing into Assam’s lowlands.
A local vlogger described the destruction, saying trees as tall as 30 to 40 metres fell from the hills and that entire homes had disappeared, calling it “a tsunami.”
Government officials have cited excessive rainfall and climate change as the main drivers, but opposition legislators and researchers argue that unregulated riverbed mining has significantly worsened the impact.
Among the tragic accounts is one involving two friends of different faiths who died together, when a Hindu man drowned while trying to rescue a Muslim woman caught in the floodwaters.
Deforestation data shows Nagaland lost 14 percent of its tree cover between 2002 and 2025, with Mon district among the worst affected, a factor experts say has worsened runoff into Assam’s rivers.
Government officials have attributed the scale of the disaster primarily to unusually intense rainfall and climate change, while opposition legislators have pushed back, blaming unregulated mining operations.
The Brahmaputra river’s heavy sediment load steadily weakens embankments over time, and nearly 40 percent of Assam’s total land area is considered vulnerable to flooding in a typical monsoon season.
Assam floods almost every year during the monsoon, but this year’s disaster was unusual in that floodwaters from cloudburst-driven tributary surges arrived before the Brahmaputra itself reached peak levels, catching low-lying areas off guard.
The worst-hit districts include Sivasagar, Charaideo, Jorhat and Golaghat in upper Assam, along with Mon district across the border in neighbouring Nagaland.
Photo by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
