Displaced and disregarded: The plight of Assam’s erosion victims

River erosion in Assam renders tens of thousands landless every year. Rehabilitation is a solution, but the state’s promises and policies have not taken off, forcing many to migrate to urban centres in search of work 

Mahmodul Hassan

Seventy-year-old Abu Bakkar Siddique and his family evacuated from the land they had lived on for decades amid constant threat of erosion in Dhubri district of Assam. Mahmodul Hassan/The Migration Story

DHUBRI, Assam: Anuwar Hussain’s family of seven had managed to sustain a life by the Brahmaputra for generations tilling their 17 bighas (or, 5.61 acre) in Dhubri district, on the border of Assam in India and Bangladesh. 

When he was in mid-20s, he saw the river inch closer and closer to his farm land. The river’s cycle of erosion and floods had been eating away at the land and their profit they could take from the land. “We were getting just around Rs. 20,000 as profit due to crop loss from the floods. But this was enough to put food on the table.” he said. 

By late 2022, the river’s erosion had claimed his home and farm. His family managed to collect their belongings and shift to a riverine char - an island of sand formed due to the ebbs and flows of the Brahmaputra - where they pitched a ramshackle shed. This was their new home: unsanctioned by the government, but one that housed them in their time of desperation. 

Hussain was 28 then. His family was in a crisis, and he had to make a choice. “Each day, we’d worry about how we are going to feed the family,” he said. 

Hussain, who had primarily tended to his land and lived with family, decided he would migrate. Eventually, he ended up in Kolkata, where he works as a daily-wage construction worker: living in squalor of the city while sending most of his wages back home. 

Thirty seven-year-old Monuwara Khatun had to dismantle her house as the eroding Brahmaputra reached less than 10 metres from her house in Tarangpur area of Goalpara district in Assam. Mahmodul Hassan/The Migration Story

A pervasive disaster unfolds 

Hussain is one among the many in Assam who have lost their homes and land to the ever-shifting Brahmaputra. Assam government’s own data shows that since 1950, erosion along the Brahmaputra and its tributaries has eroded over 1.05 million acres of land. This is nearly 7.4 per cent of Assam’s total area. Or, an area nearly the size of Goa and Delhi washed away. 

The human cost of this erosion is massive: with government data showing at least 432 villages completely eroded and a further 932 villages being partially submerged. 

Erosion of land is closely inter-linked with migration, and researchers have called for policies including resettlement and social safety nets to be implemented to reduce poverty and outmigration. 

There is no dearth of government promises, announcements, schemes and policies promising monetary compensation for lost homes and allocation of new agricultural land for victims. However, review of policies and ground realities indicate that the Assam government has dragged its feet on allocating funds for rehabilitation. Instead, it has adopted an exclusionary policy that prevents thousands from rebuilding their lives close to their eroded homes. 

The reporter tried reaching out to the Chief Executive Office of Assam State Disaster Management Authority with queries on the issues around the rehabilitation policy implementation and river erosion, however, the official could not be reached out on the official number till the time of writing this report.

No account of those displaced

The count of river erosion victims is sparse, unreliable and contradictory. 

Assam government’s data shows that between 2014 and 2024, just 17,390 persons were displaced. However, in July 2019, the Ministry for Water Resources told the Lok Sabha that 86,536 people in Assam had been rendered landless by erosion between 2014 and 2019. 

“This underreporting allows the government to hide the larger dangerous humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding over the decades. The state has failed them, but tries to hide behind the numbers,” said Lokman Hussain, convenor of the Struggle Committee for Permanent Protection Against Erosion that wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2025 about the failures to address the suffering of erosion-affected persons. 

Even in the state government’s assessment, there has been almost no rehabilitation. Just 1,563 people or 9 percent of the state’s accounts of erosion-affected victims received monetary support for lost land and homes. 

“The government not only failed to protect the people and their landed properties from erosion. It has also not rehabilitated any of these uprooted families in a planned manner,” said Lokman. 

Local authorities employ labourers to work on preventing erosion in Dhubri district of Assam. 

Mahmodul Hassan/The Migration Story

Exclusionary schemes that go nowhere 

Much of the delay is an inability by the state to recognise the magnitude of the problem. It was in 2015 that the Assam Government launched the Chief Minister’s Special Scheme for Rehabilitation of Erosion-Affected Families. However, its provisions were so vague that even the meagre amount of Rs. 5 crore allotted to it was not spent. 

As more houses were eroded and lands washed away, it formulated another erosion policy in 2020, this time with a larger budget of Rs. 200 crore. However, the government imposed severe eligibility criteria, in particular, demanding a plethora of land documents. 

Only those with pattas (land titles) or those with entries in the Jamabandi - entries in official land record documents that provide detailed information about land ownership, tenancy, and rights within a revenue village - can access rehabilitation. 

The 2021 criteria mentions: “families occupying government lands as encroachers shall not be eligible for rehabilitation.” 

This too was largely unimplemented until April 2025, when it has sought Rs. 526 crore from the Centre to rehabilitate and compensate thousands of victims of river erosion. 

The internal migration crisis 

In Dhubri, Goalpara, Majuli, Morigaon, Barepeta and Hojai districts, this reporter found that a large number of displaced families were staying on government land over the years. Many live on embankments and char areas (riverine areas or islands formed on the Brahmaputra). 

Omar Ali, now 64, lost nearly three acres of land to erosion in 1977 in Kharchimari village in the northern bank of Brahmaputra. Over 200 families were displaced then. He and 10 other households in his village moved some six km inland and found refuge in forest land in Falimari. However, by 1984, the forest department sought to evict these families. After approaching the district commissioner and revenue department, they were “allocated” this land in the 1990s. Ali was given 1 bigha (0.33 acre) of land - not enough to earn a livelihood, but enough to have a place to call home. 

But, he and other families were not given a patta. Instead they were given a river erosion certificate that recognised them as victims of riverbank erosion. The Assam government has said that it doesn't have provisions to recognise these certificates for rehabilitation. 

Over the years, Ali has tried to rectify this. He pinned his hopes on the Assam government's initiative, Mission Basundhara, which offers several land-related services through its online portal, including regularisation of settlements on government land. But, this excludes riverine char and forest lands - on which thousands of river-erosion families stay.

A villager stands at the eroded bank of Brahmaputra river in Dhubri district of Assam.

Mahmodul Hassan/The Migration Story

Ali’s application was rejected. And by April 2025, they received eviction notices as the forest land was now going to be converted to a protected reserve forest. 

“Now we are constantly scared, if we get evicted, where will we go? What will be the future of our children,” Ali said.

Similarly, thousands like Ali  have been forced into conflict with the government after their desperate displacement. As of 2023, Assam government’s data shows that at least 37,000 river-erosion affected persons were living on government or village common lands in 23 districts. This figure excludes districts of Darrang and South Salmara-Mankachar which witness high levels of river erosion. 

Most of these families become vulnerable to eviction drives. 

The data research organisation Land Conflict Watch documented at least 19 land conflicts in Assam, covering over 18,000 acres and directly affecting over 29,000 people—primarily victims of floods and river erosion. The majority of these conflicts are driven by factors such as evictions, encroachments, urban development, and land use involving forests and protected areas. Significantly, 84 percent of these conflicts involve common land, where displaced communities have been forced to settle in the absence of formal rehabilitation. 

“Once these unrehabilitated people move to other parts of Assam, settle in government land, they are seen as Bangladeshis and doubtful citizens and evicted,” said Lokman Hussain from the Struggle Committee for river erosion. 

In recent years, the state’s eviction drives have become political tools for exclusion and discrimination, Lokman said. For example, following a violent eviction drive in Kachutali area, near Guwahati in 2024, local TV channels announced in their headline: “Bangladeshi Miyas attack indigenous people in guerilla style in Sonapur's eviction spot.” In 2021, 1,300 families - majority of them victims of erosion - faced violent eviction which led to the death of two people in police firing. 

Near the Wahab Bazar in Dhubri in Assam, river erosion victim Moijuddin Sheikh shows the extent of erosion of his land. Mahmodul Hassan/The Migration Story

The unrehabilitated majority 

The personal cost of rehabilitation can be devastating. It isn’t just land washed away: it is loss of livelihood, loss of identity and dispersed families. 

Eighty-year-old Moijuddin Sheikh, dressed in a black T-shirt and lungi, summons strength from his frail body to desperately dismantle his bamboo-and-tin-sheets home. The Brahmaputra river is less than five metres away; its fast flowing water takes away chunks of soil. Each hour brings it inches closer to Sheikh’s home.

Nearby, angry residents of Wahab Bazar, a market on the river’s southern bank in Assam’s Dhubri district – near the Bangladesh border - have blocked a road. Brahmaputra has already eaten into much of the village and displaced many. The impromptu protest demanded land and rehabilitation for families affected by the erosion. 

Sheikh had already been displaced once by the Brahmaputra 12 years ago. At the time, 27 bighas of land (or, 8.9 acres), including his home, were washed away. He then shifted to a small parcel of land gifted by his in-laws. Now, even this is slipping into the murky waters of the Brahmaputra. “For now, we’ll have to stay on rent. Or, find a public land to move into,” says Sheikh. In the long-term, the options are limited. “We will need to go outside and find work.” 

Mahmodul Hassan is a multimedia journalist and researcher. His work takes an investigative approach to the intersection of human rights, natural resource governance, policy, and justice issues.