Flooding Memories

For Assamese migrants in Bengaluru, trauma caused by floods is an annual ritual.

Maitreyee Boruah

Koyes Ahmed Laskar from Assam's Hailakandi district stands in front of his cab parked at KR Market in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Maitreyee Boruah/The Migration Story

BENGALURU, Karnataka: Like any other June morning, the Krishnarajendra Market, better known as KR Market, in Bengaluru was bustling. It takes a moment to make sense of the myriad sights, sounds, and smells quintessential to the city’s largest wholesale market. Every morning, Koyes Ahmed Laskar makes it a point to meet his friends, who are vegetable vendors at the market, before he begins his work. He lives in a rented room in a multi-storied dilapidated building in the KR Market to stay close to his friends, who he says are like family.

All of them hail from Hailakandi district in the Barak Valley, Assam’s southernmost region, and many of them, like Laskar, had been working in the city for more than a decade. The 27-year-old cab driver calls himself a “runaway boy,” as he came to Bengaluru as a 15-year-old school dropout. “There was no work in my village. Despite all the struggles, I am working, which would not have been possible in my village," he told The Migration Story.

For Laskar and his friends, May, June, and July are anxious months. His village of Boalipar was inundated with water when the first floods of the year hit the state on May 30. “It had turned into a small river for almost 10 days, after which the water receded,” Laskar said, showing the grim images and videos of the calamity sent by friends and family back home. The first wave affected 21 out of the state’s 35 districts and led to a wave of displacement in rural areas. An estimated 5,00,000 people were made homeless this time. “Even though I am far away, my heart is in my village,” he said, adding that it was difficult to make sense of the scale of destruction floods caused every year.

Koyes Ahmed Laskar holds his phone to show a video clip of a woman standing inside her flooded house in Assam's Boalipar village, which was inundated with water from May 30 till the first week of June.

Maitreyee Boruah/The Migration Story

Migrant workers carry the trauma of floods with them and relive the horrors every year through the experiences of the family and friends they have left behind. Whenever a flood hits their village, they grapple with a dilemma: go back and risk losing their job or continue working with an overbearing sense of helplessness. Moni Begum experienced the same dilemma during the recent floods. The 30-year-old mother came to Bengaluru last year from Melamati village in Jorhat district.  “I have been unable to sleep for several days. I continue to worry about my son. He is only 12. Our fields were submerged in water, and my hut was damaged. I can’t go back home as I have to earn money and help my family financially,” she said.

Begum earns 16,000 rupees a month, working as a housekeeper at an IT company. She lives in a room built with tin sheets, for which she pays 4,000 rupees as rent, in the Bellandur area of the city. Her room is part of an informal settlement of around a thousand such single-room tenements. Nazimuddin, who runs a grocery shop in the locality, said that around 40% of the residents were from Assam. “People in this settlement do the toughest and dirtiest of jobs in the city for a meagre salary,” the 46-year-old added. He came to Bengaluru 13 years ago from Pachim Moudanga village in Hojai district. “We all have almost the same story—we are poor, floods wreak havoc in our villages, and we come to Bengaluru,” he said.

After criss-crossing Bengaluru for 15 hours a day, seven days a week, Laskar manages to earn around 50,000 rupees a month, which he said is more than what the average driver gets, because he owns his car. Like all migrant workers, he sends part of his income home, but after a flood, he ends up sending more than half his earnings to help repair his house. This year, the financial hit was worse. Laskar had spent one lakh rupees in January to set up a fishpond attached to his house, hoping it would become an additional source of income for his family. “The flood took away all the fish with it. I lost all my money, which took me almost a year to save,” he said, adding that floods decide the fates of thousands like him in Assam.  

“Floods are our annual ritual,” Kayrul Islam, one of Laskar’s friends, said. The 25-year-old’s village of Nitainagar was also affected by the floods, as was Vichingha Part 1, where Saharu Alam, 22, comes from. “It is poverty and lack of jobs in our villages that cause us to move to cities like Bengaluru,” Alam said. Laskar added that villages in his region were unable to make any progress because floods occurred at least three times a year. “Floods destroy farmlands, homes and everything that comes their way. Most youths in my village have migrated to different cities in search of work. As they have little or no education, they are all working in low-paying jobs,” he said.  

An endemic disaster 

A file picture of a village woman in Assam, financially helped by the Assam Society of Bangalore to open her shop.

Rituraj Phukan, founder of the Indigenous People's Climate Justice Forum and an environmental activist from Nagaon, said that floods have persisted for decades. The state experienced major floods in 1972, 1974, 1978, 1983, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2012. However, in recent years, the nature of flooding has become rapid, which Phukan attributed to the speed at which glaciers were melting. A recent study revealed that 5% of the world’s glacier ice, roughly 6,500 billion tonnes, has melted as a consequence of climate change since the turn of the millennium. “The Brahmaputra carries at least 30% of glacial meltwater, resulting in increased flooding, erosion, and displacement of people,” Phukan said. 

The state experienced flash floods in 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024, which inundated vast expanses of land for several weeks. Mandira Buragohain, who leads the Knowledge Management and Climate Change department at the Assam State Disaster Management Authority, told The Migration Story that the annual flood season is from May 1 to October 31. She added that the state was highly vulnerable to climate change, experiencing a cycle of heavy rainfall followed by hot and humid days. According to the State Action Plan on Climate Change, extreme rainfall events in Assam are likely to increase by 5-38%, and the incidence of floods by 25% during the period from 2021 to 2050.

Phukan felt that the government’s efforts were limited to structural measures, such as building or renovating dykes and dams, along with relocation efforts, disaster relief and flood forecasting. He added that the government should involve indigenous communities, who, along with the poorest, are the most vulnerable to climate disasters. “These events have already devastated their livelihoods, land, and food security. Indigenous communities have lived close to natural habitats for generations. Their knowledge and management skills should be utilised. They should be at the forefront of climate justice.”

Phukan belongs to the Tai-Ahom community, one of at least 30 indigenous groups residing in the plains and hills of Assam. His organisation collaborates with local communities, like Tai-Ahom, Bodo, Mishing, Tiwa, Karbi, and Rabha, to implement climate-resilient survival mechanisms, such as building houses on stilts and cultivating flood-resistant rice varieties.

The need for holistic mitigation measures is not just necessary for addressing displacement, but also essential for food security. According to the Assam government, in 2022, floods caused 181 fatalities, affected nearly 35 districts, and impacted 87 lakh people. The floods also destroyed crops across 2.46 lakh hectares. The Flood Hazard Atlas for Assam, published in 2016, indicated a significant rise in crop damage due to floods between 1953, when it was 0.93 million hectares, and 2005, when it was 2.24 million hectares. According to the National Disaster Management Authority, 14.58 lakh hectares of cropped area were at risk of flooding. 

Pinku Muktiar, assistant professor at the Mahapurusha Srimanta Sankaradeva Viswavidyalaya, said that while floods led to large-scale displacement, it was the recurring soil erosion that primarily led to the loss of livelihood. “The significant loss of crops and land during floods is making agriculture increasingly unviable for Assam’s rural population. They have no choice but to migrate to urban centres, both within and outside the state, to find jobs in the informal sector,” Phukan said. 

Forty-three-year-old Rajen Phukon, who belongs to Phukan’s community, arrived in the city in 2000 from Dihingia, his village in Dhemaji district that is highly vulnerable to floods due to development activities upstream in Arunachal Pradesh. “My first job was as a security guard in a software company. Since then, I have not left the city,” Phukon said. He has vivid memories of floods from his childhood, but said that there had been a change in the last few years. “The floodwaters no longer enter my village, though neighbouring areas do still get inundated,” he said. 

Invisible and unaccounted  

One of many settlements of Assamese migrant workers at Bellandur in Bengaluru. The houses are made of tin sheets with wooden doors. Maitreyee Boruah/The Migration Story

In 2011, Phukon founded a firm, which today employs 700 security guards, of whom 500 are from Assam. “In Bengaluru, most security guards in offices, hotels, and apartments are from Assam. Security guards and Assamese men have become almost synonymous,” he said. Government records indicate that at least 5,72,064 people have migrated from Assam to other parts of the country. Some estimates state that Bengaluru is home to 1.5 to 2 lakh people from the state. 

However, the Assam Association Bangalore and the Assam Society of Bangalore, two organisations representing people from Assam, stated that the reported numbers do not accurately reflect the ground realities.  

“Migrant workers in the informal sector often prefer to remain invisible and do not want to be counted,” Chandan Kumar Sharma, professor at Tezpur University, said. Sharma, who conducted a 10-year study along with Muktiar examining the living and working conditions of Assamese migrant workers in Bengaluru, said informal workers from the state favoured cities in the south due to better wages, favourable weather conditions, and a more inclusive society.

While there is no state-level data on out-migration, Muktiar said that some gram panchayats keep a record. “In Telia Gaon village near Tezpur, we found that 90% of households have family members who have migrated. But these figures are very tentative,” he said.  Anant Lal Gyani, Labour Commissioner of Assam, said that some migration data is maintained through the e-Shram portal and that they had started registering placement agencies to track both incoming and outgoing migrants. “There is no fixed pattern of out-migration. Some stay for a week, some months, and some years in their destinations,” Pranav Kuttaiah, who spent a month in Hailakandi district in January to understand the nature of migration as part of his doctoral research, said.

Debabrata Saikia, the leader of the opposition in the state legislature, told The Migration Story that ideally, the Assam government should provide employment opportunities to locals. “Since that is not happening and out-migration is happening daily, we need laws to protect them, even if they stay far away.” He introduced a bill in March, which, if implemented, will make it incumbent on the government to track migration and appoint state officials in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Bengaluru, who will be responsible for the welfare of migrant workers in the region.

A vicious cycle of trauma and anxiety 

The looming threat of floods in their hometowns runs parallel to the daily precarious nature of their work and life. The threat of eviction and demolition hangs like a sword over migrant workers living in informal settlements such as the one where Begum resides. “Migrant labourers are the backbone of the city’s economy. The state has not only neglected their basic rights like providing them with toilet facilities, but also attacked them with evictions,” Vijayakumar Seethappa, a filmmaker and social activist in Bengaluru, said. In August 2024, the police destroyed the homes of nearly 70 families, whom they branded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. “Bengali-speaking Muslim migrants from Assam and West Bengal are targeted for being illegal immigrants, despite having all the documents to prove their nationality. They are at the receiving end only because they are poor,” Seethappa said. 

A view of the vegetable market inside Bengaluru's biggest wholesale hub, KR Market. Maitreyee Boruah/The Migration Story

Migrant workers across the spectrum that I met called Bengaluru their second home, having learnt the language and adapted to the local customs. At KR Market, Laskar’s friends effortlessly spoke with their customers in Kannada. “Knowing the local language makes life easier. I know Tamil too,” Laskar said. Kuttaiah noted that Assamese workers had expressed a strong desire to return to their villages one day. Laskar is one of those who harbours that dream. “I want to go back home and start my business—a car showroom in Hailakandi town, which is two kilometres from my village,” he said. However, for many, the city is no longer a second home. In addition to fulfilling his ambition of “being his own boss,” Phukon found a soulmate in the city—a local Kannadiga woman, whom he met at work. “I was a security guard and she was a receptionist. We got married in 2004. I have a son studying at a college. Life is good here. Bengaluru is home.” 

ASSAM’S ANNUAL TRYST WITH FLOODING

In 2021, at least 5.8 million people were affected by flooding in 31 districts of Assam, with an estimated death toll of 73.

In 2022, at least 9 million people were affected in 35 districts, and the estimated death toll in the floods was estimated at 278.

In 2023, approximately 120,000 people were affected in 20 districts, resulting in the deaths of 65 people.

In 2024, at least 4.2 million people were affected in 35 districts, leading to 117 fatalities.

Source: India Today and Govt of Assam

Maitreyee Boruah is a Bengaluru-based independent journalist