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Guwahati, Assam: In the bustling sobji bozaar (vegetable market) at Beltola locality of Assam’s Guwahati, Purtima Bodo (46) greeted every customer with a smile even as the scorching July sun beat down on her. Wiping the sweat from her face with a gamosa – the traditional Assamese cotton cloth – she would call out repeatedly: “Aji mur tat kaji nemu aasey” (I have kaji nemu for sale).

Bodo, who belongs to Assam’s indigenous Bodo tribal community, grows the kaji nemu, an indigenous seedless variety of lemon with a Geographical Indicator tag, in her garden. Her farm is in Hatimura village in Assam’s Goalpara district, 115 kilometres from Guwahati. The produce she sells, she told 101Reporters, is as fresh as it gets – she picked it just the previous afternoon.

Purtima Bodo, 46, a vegetable vendor at Guwahati's famous Beltola vegetable market, sits with an assortment of local vegetables, including kaji nemu, in front of her for sale (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters) \n

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The open-air vegetable market in Beltola operates on Thursdays and Sundays, when farmers from rural settlements in Assam and neighbouring Meghalaya bring a range of indigenous foods to Guwahati. Tribal women vendors like Bodo are an important link between these rural food systems and the city.

They bring xak (wild greens) such as dhekia (fiddlehead fern), manimuni (asiatic pennywort), masundari (fish mint) and bhedai lota (skunk vine), as well as traditional rice varieties such as bao-dhan (deep-water red rice), aromatic joha and sticky bora rice, along with tubers, roots and khorisa (fermented bamboo shoots).

The colourful assortment of indigenous food including kosur thari (colocassia stems), mitha aloo (sweet potatoes), and varieties of xak (leafy green vegetables) for sale at a vegetable market in Guwahati (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters) \n

But many of these varieties are increasingly difficult to find in mainstream markets. Farmers often grow them in small quantities rather than commercially, said Pramila Rongpi (40), a vendor from Naziraghat, 30 kilometres from Guwahati.

“These varieties are hard to find even in supermarkets as most farmers have opted for high-yielding hybrid rice varieties for profit,” said Rongpi, who belongs to Assam’s Karbi ethnic community. Like Bodo, she has been vending vegetables, rice varieties and other eatables in Guwahati for 10 years.

“These indigenous women traders are the custodians of our region’s ‘living heritage’ – the indigenous food systems. They act as a link between the forest and the urban plate… preserving a gene pool that is naturally resistant to pests and droughts,” said Kamal Kumar Tanti, director of the Centre for Environment and Climate Action Foundation (CECAF) in Guwahati.

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Pramila Rongpi, 40, is a vegetable vendor. She is from Naziraghat, a village 30 kilometres from Guwahati in Assam (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters) \n

Under climate pressure 

But the food systems they help preserve are themselves becoming increasingly vulnerable to a changing climate.

Munmi Phukon, a scientist at the Assam Rice Research Institute, Assam Agricultural University, Titabor, told 101Reporters that rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and extreme weather events, including floods and droughts, were affecting locally available indigenous food sources across Assam.

“This is due to climate change. There is a reason why a particular food variety is unique to a place. It all depends on rainfall, sunrise, humidity, soil moisture and soil content, among others,” she said.

“Like kaji nemu, which is unique to Assam; earlier, its flowers bloomed abundantly during winters. Now the winter season has shortened, and so the flowering and final harvest.” According to climate projections released by Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, in 2025, mean annual temperatures in some districts of Assam may rise by up to 0.83 degrees Celsius by 2040, while monsoon rainfall may decline by as much as 15% over the same period.

In the Brahmaputra valley, inconsistent rainfall and rising temperatures are also affecting the life cycles of wild foods, experts said.

“Certain species of wild mushrooms and wild greens are emerging late or in small numbers. Urban development around Guwahati has led to the destruction of ‘common lands’ and wetlands where these women usually collected food from the wild,” said Tanti. “Foraging of wild berries and medicinal plants has become difficult due to monoculture plantations in forest areas.”

Keeping the market alive

However, these indigenous food products continue to be in demand despite some urban youth moving towards a less traditional food palette. In Guwahati, for instance, tholua (ethnic Assamese) cuisine remains popular, with many eateries serving traditional Assamese dishes.

“Continuing demand encourages women to continue to produce and helps in maintaining the traditional ‘bari’ system (homestead farming) and sustainable foraging system,” said Tanti.

“In the hilly regions of Assam and Meghalaya, rural folks continue to practise traditional shifting cultivation in all its diversity. Otherwise, most of the land would have been converted to rubber and palm oil plantations.”

Atul Lahkar, a chef who popularised indigenous Assamese food, told 101Reporters that he regularly bought ingredients from tribal women vendors at vegetable markets in Guwahati.

“Without them, urban people would have lost the taste of the finest indigenous food habits,” Lahkar said.

He cited masor tenga (tangy fish curry), cooked with thekera (garcinia), and khar, an alkaline product made from banana ash and usually cooked with unripe papaya.

A typical Assamese thali (food plate) with rice, dal, xak, aloo pitika, and other favourite dishes served on a kahor kahi (bell metal plate) (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters) \n

The cost of bringing tradition to the city

But preserving the taste of Assamese culture comes at a cost. The women travel long distances carrying vegetables and other traditional foods, including homemade tapioca chips from Meghalaya’s East Khasi Hills and freshwater snails handpicked from streams, marshes and paddy fields.

Garo tribal women from Nagrabil in the East Khasi Hills, for instance, travel in groups, walking first, then taking two-wheelers and finally hiring a four-wheeler to reach Guwahati. Though the village is about 50 kilometres away, the journey takes around three hours because of the hilly terrain.

“As I travel through hilly terrain, I have to wait a long time to board public transport. It takes me three hours (one way) to reach Beltola in Guwahati,” said Romeo Sangma (35), a vendor.

The long journey brings exhaustion and body aches.

“We are not only vendors. We are also farmers and homemakers. We do a lot of work, and there is hardly any rest for us. My body aches a lot,” said Robina Marak (30), a mother of three from Nagrabil.

The snails sold by Robina Marak are packed together in a plastic bag (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters) \n

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Bodo told 101Reporters that to reach Beltola before 7 am and find a good spot for her products, she has to start her journey at 2 am from Hatimura village. Around five to six women from neighbouring villages travel with her to make the trip cost-efficient. Per head, daily food and travel costs Rs 300 to Rs 400 and they earn around Rs 1000 to Rs 2000 per day.

“My household is run from my earnings. My husband is unwell, and my son is looking for work after finishing his school education,” said Bodo.

The Guwahati Municipal Corporation collects a daily fee of Rs 100 to Rs 250 from the vendors. “The corporation people collect money from us daily without fail, but when it comes to providing us with basic needs like a shade, they don’t listen to us,” Sangma said.

For these women, the work of keeping indigenous foods in cultivation, on city markets and on urban plates continues alongside the daily struggle to earn a living – with little support for the basic conditions in which they do it.

This story was produced under the Biodiversity Reporting Fellowship, supported by Earth Journalism Network.

Cover Image - Tribal women vendors sit in a row on a footpath at the Beltola vegetable market in Guwahati (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

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Lakhimpur, Assam: Rupali Tanti (47), a tea garden labourer from Assam's Lakhimpur district, is known among her family and neighbours as a borhiya randhoni or a great cook. Her son, Sonu, 20, a college student, calls his mother \"MasterChef\" because of her \"fantastic culinary skills.\"

\"I love everything Maa cooks. Her best dish is mutton curry with chunky pieces of potatoes floating in the meat fat,\" said Sonu.

Tanti, who works at Cinnatolliah tea plantation, gives credit to the maatir souka or an earthen stove on which she prepares three meals a day. “The distinct taste and flavour of food come from cooking with khori (firewood) on the souka,\" she said.

The souka takes pride of place in the kitchen of almost every household in labour colonies across Assam's tea plantations. These kitchens are manned by Adivasi women labourers of hundreds of plantations spread across the northeastern state.

But cooking with firewood is becoming increasingly difficult. And for women like Tanti, what was once a routine survival practice has become something closer to a punishable offence.

A woman preparing food using firewood (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters) \n

\"The management of tea gardens has become very strict. Most women avoid openly collecting even uprooted tea bushes, branches, twigs, and leaves. Those who do so are scolded and beaten, too. A hefty fine, around Rs 500, is also imposed. It has become illegal to forage in the wild,\" said Tanti, a native of Balijan village, close to Arunachal Pradesh.

Every day, Tanti rides her bicycle five kilometres from Balijan to reach Cinnatolliah tea garden. Her eight-hour shift of picking tea leaves begins at 8 am. She has been working for 30 years now, almost without a break.

‘It has become dangerous’

Her concerns were echoed by Kalpana Ghatowar, 32, a tea garden labourer from Gatoonga tea plantation in Jorhat district. They are separated by 85 kilometres, but their issues remain the same.

\"I have learnt cooking from my grandmother. She always cooked on a chulha. So did my mother. I also do the same. Thus, it is the responsibility of women of a household to collect firewood. It has become difficult to collect firewood now. Earlier, we would find sufficient firewood from fallen trees and dead tea bushes inside our tea garden. Now that is not the case,\" said Ghatowar.

\"Since buying firewood is beyond our means, most women on the sly pick up branches, logs and twigs from the tea garden or nearby wild areas. I know a lot of women labourers who have faced verbal abuse or beating by forest guards or sardars (supervisors of a tea garden). It has become dangerous,\" she added.

Milika Topno, an Adivasi research scholar and lawyer from North Lakhimpur, said access to firewood remained a concern across tea gardens. \"Women labourers are facing difficulties in arranging fuelwood for their kitchen. They often tell me of being scolded by supervisors and forest guards. With the rise in demand for forest products and parallel depletion of natural resources, the vigilance inside forests has increased,\" she said.

Foraged branches and twigs collected for domestic kitchen fuelwood (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

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Conservation versus livelihood

The plantation areas of Assam, since their inception two centuries ago, have always used firewood to cook. Tea gardens are planted close to forests, and the abundance of tea bushes and shade trees within them forms a vital agroforestry. The inhabitants — primarily Adivasis residing in labour colonies — have always had considerable access to forest products, including timber for fuelwood and non-timber products like medicinal plants and wild edible vegetables.

\"On a routine basis, women labourers walk a few kilometres or ride their bicycles to collect firewood after their strenuous work at the bagaan. They carry the collected lot on their head as they come back home. It adds another layer of burden on the women,\" said Topno, whose parents are also tea garden labourers.

\"Adivasi women are not the destroyers of forests or nature. They are rather helping the forest to regenerate. They know what to pick and what to leave untouched. They take what they need only. It is a symbiotic relation they share with the forests. Adivasis are the worshipers of nature,\" she added.

There is also a formal entitlement that is increasingly failing women on the ground. At a meeting held in Shillong in May 1962, a \"firewood agreement for tea garden employees\" was established. Under it, the Labour Commissioner was instructed to ensure that tea estates provide firewood to labourers.

\"To date, every household should get 320 kilograms of wood annually from the management. If not, workers are paid around Rs 1,200 annually. But the amount varies from one tea garden to another,\" said Mahavir Ghatowar, 36, supervisor at Jorhat's Gatoonga tea estate. In practice, the firewood provided lasts only three to four months a year.

Tea estate officials have said that stricter vigilance is intended to stop unsustainable fuelwood extraction. Under the Assam State Forest Policy 2004, rural people living close to reserved forests are allowed to gather dead and fallen wood for domestic use, but cannot cut trees or damage forests.

\"The times have changed. Where are the resources? Most forests are gone, and those that remain have become closed entities. So tribals, Adivasis and others settled close to forest areas are finding it difficult to collect wood, vegetables and other forest products,\" said Bhabesh Chandra Das, an Assam Forest Department official based in Guwahati.

Das, who previously headed the social forestry wing in Assam’s Baksa district, was measured in his assessment of the women foraging for survival. \"The locals have always been protectors of forests. They know the forest inside out, more than any forest official. There are some anti-social elements among them, too. But they are the anomalies,\" he said.

Tea garden labourers having their meal during a break (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

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Legal constraints

Assam is governed by the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and the Wildlife (Protection) (Assam Amendment) Act, 2009, among others — all of which restrict unauthorised entry and foraging inside protected areas. Critically, Adivasis and tea tribes are not considered forest dwellers under law, and do not enjoy scheduled tribe status in Assam. Their access to forest areas has been legally restricted for decades.

The risks of venturing in regardless are not only legal. Das listed encounters with wild animals, snakebites, attacks by criminals, including human traffickers notorious across tea gardens, and unpredictable weather as dangers women face when they forage.

A tea garden worker earns Rs 280 a day since April this year, up from Rs 250. Temporary workers have no work for three to six months annually. Buying firewood from the market is beyond the means of most.

Workers and their families gathering outside within the tea plantation estate (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

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Arfan Hussain, director of Sewa, a non-profit organisation in Assam's Dibrugarh, works with tea garden communities on cooking practices. \"We simply can't ask workers, who earn the bare minimum, to switch to an LPG cylinder for their better health and overall environment,\" he said. Sewa has installed more than 1,500 smokeless earthen chulhas free of cost in eight tea gardens, stoves that use 50-60 per cent less firewood than traditional ones.

For now, Tanti is caught between an unaffordable alternative and a shrinking resource. \"The food cooked on chulha tastes much better than LPG gas, but I am tired of collecting firewood. It has become scarce with each passing day,\" she said. \"So those with an LPG connection have kept their stoves and cylinders in their storehouse.\"

This story was produced as a part of 101Reporters Climate Change Reporting Grant.

Cover Image - A worker cooking a meal over using firewood (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

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As maize cultivation expands across Assam, climate shifts and rising pest attacks are eroding yields and farmer confidence.

Kamrup, Assam: On a pleasant sunny day in the first week of April, Bangalpara, a village in Assam's Kamrup district, was busy harvesting maize. The village sits around 35 kilometres from Assam's capital, Dispur.

The west bank of the Hajo Suti River, flowing gently through Bangalpara, had turned yellow — freshly harvested corn kernels spread across large plastic sheets, drying in the sun. Overlooking the riverbank were vast swathes of ripened maize plants, waiting their turn.

Maize, or maakoi, is the main crop grown in Bangalpara. The village has around 550 residents, and all 100-odd households are engaged in farming.

\"Around 2,000 bighas (268 hectares) of land in Bangalpara are under cultivation. Of that, we grow maize on 90 per cent of the land, and paddy on the remaining 10 per cent,\" said Kutubuddin Ahmed, 48, the gaon bura or village head of Bangalpara.

Abdul Rashid, 81, the village's oldest farmer, interjected: \"We are traditionally dhan (paddy) growing people. Maize was introduced as a commercial crop in Bangalpara in 2017. Slowly, it replaced dhan. Now the farmers are mostly growing maize,\" the octogenarian told The 101 Reporters.

The pride in Rashid's face quickly gives way to despondency. \"We are poor people. We have to keep working till we die. No matter how hard we work, botor (the weather) and puk (pests) destroy half the crops we grow,\" he added.

All the farmers of Bangalpara share Rashid's dejection.

Yet the farm work never stopped. On that April day, the whole village, including children, worked in sync with two maize threshing machines separating corn kernels from cobs on the bank of the Hajo Suti River. The machines produced a constant buzzing that made everyone speak louder.

Men fed the machines ear by ear. Women and children collected the kernels, cobs and husks, sorting them into separate zones.

\"We sell corn kernels and use cobs and husk for animal feed and fuel,\" said Arjina Khatun, 27, a woman farmer.

A maize threshing machine separates corn kernels from cobs on the bank of the Hajo Suti River in Bangalpara village (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

The pest problem

Shahidul Islam, 28, another maize grower from Bangalpara, laid the blame squarely on pests. \"The pests are our biggest enemies. They destroyed half our maize crop, which we had sown in the last kharif season, around May 2025,\" he said.

Denim Bora, Agricultural Development Officer (ADO) of Hajo revenue circle, under which Bangalpara falls, confirmed the farmers' fears.

\"Pest attacks on maize crops have increased over the years across Assam. The state is highly vulnerable to climate change events. Unseasonal rainfall, temperature fluctuations, and extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and cyclones significantly affect maize production. Warmer, more humid conditions favour pests such as the fall armyworm, accelerating their reproduction and intensifying crop damage,\" said Bora.

\"Some of the pests attacking maize across Assam are the maize stem borer (Chilo partellus), fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), maize shoot fly (Atherigona spp.), and corn aphid (Rhopalosiphum maidis),\" he added.

Shahidul Islam, 28, from Bangalpara village, blames pests for destroying half of his maize crop last season, he poses in front of his maize crop waiting to be harvested (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

From paddy to ‘golden grain’

Earlier, maize was grown in small patches across Assam for household consumption. In 2016-17, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Indian Institute of Maize Research (IIMR), Ludhiana, in collaboration with Assam Agricultural University (AAU), Gossaigaon, launched a series of demonstrations and training programmes to promote maize as a commercial crop in the northeastern state.

The traditional paddy growers of Assam — rice is the state's staple food — began experimenting with maize on a commercial scale. The results were striking. Maize cultivation surged from 31,000 hectares in 2016–17 to 1.04 lakh hectares in 2023-24, with productivity rising 39 per cent to 5.14 tonnes per hectare.

Along with Kamrup, Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Nagaon, Darrang, and Udalguri emerged as the 11 major maize-producing districts of Assam.

\"Maize truly proved to be 'the golden grain' for Assam. The crop sparked a rural revolution, reshaping the agricultural map of the state and providing livelihoods to thousands,\" said Ramesh Kumar, principal scientist (plant breeding) at IIMR Ludhiana, over the phone.

\"To expand maize cultivation across 12 districts of the state, ICAR-IIMR joined hands with the World Bank, the Government of Assam, and the Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation (APART). More than 3,200 farmers received field-level technical training covering seed selection, modern cultivation practices, pest management, storage, and market linkages,\" Kumar added.

Maize is grown twice in Assam, in the Kharif (monsoon) and Rabi (winter) seasons, explained Bora.

\"The Kharif maize crop is used as animal fodder and fuel. The Rabi crop is for human consumption,\" he added.

Farmers across villages in Kamrup district, Ramdia, Simina, Tapabari, Bangalpara, and Borgaon, told 101 Reporters they had shifted from paddy to maize because the yield and profits were both higher.

Freshly harvested corn kernels are spread out on a large plastic sheet to dry in the sun in Bangalpara, a village in Assam's Kamrup district, on a sunny April day (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

\"In Assam, the average yield of maize is seven to 10 quintals per bigha, going up to 16 quintals per bigha. Rice yields three to six quintals per bigha, up to 10 at best. Farmers are getting Rs 1,500-1,700 per quintal for maize, against Rs 1,200-1,400 for rice,\" said Muzaffar Ali, 31, who runs a farmer producer company under APART and the Assam State Agricultural Marketing Board in Kamrup district.

A farmer producer company pools farmers together to sell produce collectively and negotiate better prices.

Behind the numbers, however, lies a grimmer reality.

\"Pest and fungal attacks and diseases have always been there. In the last four to five years, they have intensified. Crop loss is now visible. But the full extent is yet to be quantified,\" said Ali, who is also a farmer himself.

The farmers of Bangalpara said they did not know the names of the pests. \"We call them puk — insects or insect-like creatures. They crawl through our fields. Some even look harmless, like a butterfly. They mostly attack at night and destroy our crops,\" said Rashid.

Eliza Khatun, 41, a woman farmer from the village, noted that the attacks had worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic.

\"We are already fighting floods and erratic rainfall. Now, in the last five to six years, pest attacks have increased, which was not the case when the village first adopted maize as its main crop.\"

Climate stress

Floods hit Bangalpara every year between May and August, and again between September and October. Kamrup is among the most flood-prone districts in Assam. During the rains, the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, Pagaladiya, Puthimari, and Noona, swell above danger levels, inundating villages.

In 2025, 22 districts of Assam, including Kamrup, were affected by floods, destroying around 12,610 hectares of cropland. In 2024, one of the worst years in recent memory, floods swept in three waves, with the Assam Flood Memorandum 2024 recording damage across all 35 districts.

Heavy, unseasonal rains in March this year compounded the misery. \"The rains in March destroyed a lot of our maize, tomato and cabbage crops. Continuous rains made it nearly impossible to harvest in time,\" said Khatun. She and her husband, Tomaz Ali, 51, could barely salvage half their cabbage crop before it began rotting in the fields.

\"After the rains, the pest population will only increase,\" she warned.

Eliza Khatun, 41, and her husband Tomaz Ali, 51, carry a bagful of cabbage that they have grown near their maize field. Continuous rain in March destroyed half of their cabbage cultivation (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

Rising risks

So when maize was sown again in Bangalpara in mid-September 2025, Islam sharply cut back on acreage. \"Instead of 16 bighas, I planted maize on just seven. This is to limit losses from pests and erratic weather,\" he said.

\"Prices have also dropped. This season we are getting Rs 1,700 per quintal, down from Rs 2,100 last year,\" he added.

Most other farmers in the village followed suit.

Kumar, principal scientist at IIMR Ludhiana, acknowledged pests as a serious concern. \"It is mainly the fall armyworm, an invasive species, that has been attacking crops. But we have trained farmers to combat it, through deep ploughing before planting, which exposes the soil to sunlight and birds, reducing existing pests; through the use of neem cake; keeping field bunds clean; planting flowers; sowing on time and uniformly. We also recommend rotating chemicals between sprays, since pests develop resistance to repeated use of the same one,\" he said.

Ali, who runs the farmer producer company in Kamrup, said not all of the training translates to the ground. \"Most farmers here are not formally trained, but they are experienced — they have hands-on knowledge. Even so, it is not easy to fight pests when they attack in swarms. And unseasonal rains and floods keep pushing back both sowing and harvesting, leaving crops more vulnerable to stunted growth, pest attack, or rotting,\" he said.

Research confirms that pest populations thrive in conditions of erratic rainfall and elevated humidity.

Excessive rains cause cabbage to rot as seen on the farm land of Bangalpara village in Assam (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

Dr Rahul Mahanta, director of the Centre for Clouds and Climate Change Research at Cotton University, Guwahati, told 101 Reporters that rainfall patterns have shifted significantly over the past three to four decades. \"The core monsoon zone has moved from the east to the west. The western region is getting wetter while the eastern region grows drier each year — likely a consequence of climate change. A stationary wave has formed over eastern India, suppressing rainfall. This decreasing trend is likely to continue until the end of the century,\" he said.

Mahanta explained that rising temperatures increase the atmosphere's moisture-holding capacity, as described by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation — but the mechanism to lift that moisture to higher altitudes for rainfall has weakened.

\"At times, conditions become briefly suitable for rainfall, and we get an extreme burst for a day or so, followed by a dry spell of 20 to 25 days. Previously, rainfall was persistent — two to five centimetres a day over extended periods, with dry intervals of just three to five days. These shifts have fundamentally altered the flood cycle,\" he added.

Guwahati-based agricultural scientist Juri Talukdar pointed out that pests were not targeting maize alone. \"In 2023, nearly 28,000 hectares of paddy fields across Assam were destroyed due to pest infestation. Prolonged periods of warm temperatures are the primary driver of these massive attacks,\" she said.

According to climate projections released by Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, in 2025, mean annual temperatures in some districts of Assam may rise by up to 0.83 degrees Celsius by 2040, while monsoon rainfall may decline by as much as 15 per cent over the same period.

Nazirul Islam, 55, a farm labourer from the neighbouring Gandheli Tari village, said the first signs of pest infestation were wilting and stunted growth.

Nazirul Islam, 55, a farm labourer from neighbouring Gandheli Tari village (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

\"Puk buror baibey paat bur xori jai\" (plants shed their leaves because of pest attacks). \"Puk buror baibey maakoi bur bhal koi nalagey\" (the pests eat the cobs and kernels),\" he explained, while harvesting maize in Bangalpara.

Islam lost his own agricultural land to floods a decade ago. \"Now I work as a farm labourer across different villages. I earn Rs 400-700 a day, depending on the season and the work,\" he said.

This story was produced as a part of 101Reporters Climate Change Reporting Grant.

Cover Image - Gayasuddin, a farmer, holds corn produce from his farmland in his hands (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

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Scarce livelihood options drive men to migrate, leaving impoverished and vulnerable women to bear the brunt of frequent floods exacerbated by climate change

Sonitpur, Assam: “Izazul… Izazul…,” Muklesa Parveen (22) called out for her husband as she saw the flood water seeping into her one-room hut on the night of July 2, 2024, in Assam’s Bihagaon chapori.

She lay on a wooden bed, nursing her infant, panic rising with the floodwaters as the power went out, plunging everything into darkness. But her husband was over 3,500 kilometres away in Tamil Nadu for work.

She kept calling for help, clutching her daughter close as the water steadily filled her hut. It was nearly an hour before neighbours heard her cries and came to help her evacuate.

(Above)Muklesa Parveen with her daughter outside their hut in Assam's Bihagaon Chapori. Parveen's house was destroyed during last year's floods, which she rebuilt a few months ago. (Below) Musfiya Begum, 38, from Assam's Makua Chapori, has repeatedly rebuilt her hut, which has been destroyed in floods at least five times in the last 10 years.(Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

“The water rose three feet above the ground. One wall of my hut collapsed under the heavy rain and strong winds. Our farmlands were inundated, our crops destroyed,\" Parveen told 101Reporters in March 2025.

“But this is normal for us,” she added in the same breath.

“We witness at least one flood every year, sometimes even three… Our homes and fields are destroyed, and we move to a temporary location… Once the water subsides, we come back and rebuild our lives from scratch. I have suffered worse floods,” she said.

Parveen and the roughly 1,000 residents of Bihagaon Chapori live along the flood-prone silt-laden riverbanks, or chapori, of Jia Bharali, one of the major tributaries of the Brahmaputra river. The village is about 25 kilometres from Tezpur — the cultural capital of Assam — and is accessible via a narrow, sandy road that becomes especially challenging during monsoon.

Like neighbouring villages, Bihagaon Chapori survives at the mercy of the river.

One of the most flood-prone states in India, Assam, regularly faces severe flooding in the Brahmaputra and Barak river plains. Much of the flooding impacts the char and chapori regions. Chars are temporary river islands, while chaporis are silt-laden banks/floodplains, both highly vulnerable to erosion and flooding.

With floods destroying crops and homes each year, and few jobs available locally, most men are forced to migrate.

Missing men

Farmer Akram Hussain (56) of Bihagaon Chapori explained, “In at least half of the households in our village, adult men between 22-48 years work as informal labourers in urban areas. Only old and infirm men are left behind. Most men will migrate sometime or other when need arises.”

(Above) Haider Ali, 34, Gaon Bura (village headman) of Bagaribari village (right) poses for a picture with a village elder. (Below) Residents of Assam's Bagaribari village (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

While no macro-level data exists on migration from char and chapori areas, field visits provide a clearer picture of the ground reality.

When this reporter visited Bihagaon Chapori in March, she interacted with the residents of at least 25 of the village’s 170 households, clustered within a 300-metre radius. In 18 of them, adult men were away, working as informal labourers outside Assam.

In Number 4 Sialmari and neighbouring Bagaribari—two char villages in Darrang district—locals said nearly every household has at least one male member who has migrated for work.

\"Otherwise, where are the jobs here? These men are either illiterate or school dropouts. They know how to till the land and grow rice and vegetables. However, rains, floods, and the constant shifting of the Brahmaputra often destroy their agricultural produce. As a result, they seek employment in cities as daily wage labourers. Currently, Kerala is the most preferred destination for villagers,\" said Haider Ali (34), Gaon Bura or the village headman of Bagaribari.

Both villages, with about 100 households and 1,500 residents each, lie deep in the riverine terrain.

This reporter reached Dalgaon, the nearest town, after a 90-kilometre drive from Guwahati, followed by a motorbike ride through narrow, sandy tracks. Bagaribari, situated across the Dhansiri river, required a stretch on foot and crossing a precarious bamboo bridge—the only access point, often submerged or destroyed during floods.

Woman vs nature

In this precarious geography, women are left behind to manage households, farmland, livestock, and care for the elderly and children, all while living under the looming threat of the next flood.

Parveen’s husband sends her part of his Rs 15,000 income from Tamil Nadu, but it isn’t enough, since he also supports his mother, who lives separately.

To make ends meet, Parveen manages a small farm, where she grows brinjal, cabbage, cauliflower, and maize, and works as a labourer in nearby Makua Chapori while raising her toddler alone. Her earnings never exceed Rs 1,500 per month.

“Sometimes, I feel it’s pointless for him to work so far away,” she said, “but at least it’s a stable job—unlike farming here, always at risk from floods.”

Just a kilometre away, Musfiya Begum (38) shares a similar struggle against “prokritir pagalami” or the whims of nature, as she said.

Her husband, now remarried, abandoned her and their two sons. A daily wage labourer, she’s rebuilt her flood-ravaged hut five times in the past decade on an income of Rs 200 per day.

Bagaribari’s Sanu Begum (30) also shares how she has been managing her home and three children alone since floods damaged their land last July, and her husband migrated to Kerala for work. He manages to earn about Rs 20,000 per month.

Women and children tend to stay behind in flood-prone villages as migrating with their husbands is too expensive (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

“This is the story of almost every woman here,” she said.

Women tend to stay behind in flood-prone villages as migrating with their husbands is too expensive and leaves no one to manage the home, land, and family.

Sabeni Beya (67) from Number 4 Sialmari said she has grown used to floods damaging her home each year. “When the water rises, we climb a ghat—an elevated bamboo platform—and stay there for five or six days with little food and water, waiting for the flood to end. Even at this age, I will do the same when the flood water arrives again,” Beya said.

The worsening climate emergency

“While floods and erosion are natural in river systems like the Brahmaputra, the climate crisis has intensified these events,” Director of Research and Development at the Centre for Environment and Climate Action Foundation in Guwahati, Kamal Kumar Tanti, said.

“We are experiencing not just the usual seasonal flooding but also an increase in the intensity, frequency, and unpredictability of natural disasters,” he added.

Flood mapping data shows that between 1977 and 2015, flood frequency in the Kopili river basin—one of the Brahmaputra’s most flood-prone areas—has increased two-fold, especially since 2007.

In 1977, one flood was recorded; in 2015, there were 10. The highest was 21 in 2010.

(Above)A countrymade boat moored at the banks of Dhansiri river. (Below) The bamboo bridge connecting Assam's Bagaribari village to the rest of the world. (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

Experts say floods now arrive faster and hit harder.

According to Assam's Water Resources Department, the state faced major floods in the years 1972, 1974, 1978, 1983, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2012.

But in recent years—2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024—Assam has been hit by flash floods almost every year, along with prolonged periods of waterlogging. These flash floods happen due to the rivers flowing down from the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.

According to Tanti, these climate extremes are driven by erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and accelerated glacial melt, and subsequent glacial lake outbursts, complicated by increased erosion in riverine areas. More frequent and intense rainfall can lead to greater erosion and higher amounts of sediment entering water bodies like rivers and lakes.

“Although these regions have always been dynamic, the climate crisis has transformed a natural rhythm into a destructive and erratic onslaught, pushing communities beyond their capacity to cope. It is a clear manifestation of the impacts of climate change hitting the most vulnerable populations first and hardest,” Tanti said.

A humanitarian crisis, unfolding across decades and distances

According to the Water Resources Department, 3.105 million hectares—about 39.58% of Assam's total area—are flood-prone, accounting for 9.40% of India’s total flood-prone land.

Every year, around hundreds become homeless due to floods in the state. Additionally, Assam faces an annual loss of Rs 200 crore from devastating floods, with nearly 40% of the state's land classified as flood-prone by the government.

Notably, from 1953 to 2005, there has been a fluctuation in the flood-affected areas, according to the Flood Hazard Atlas for Assam (2016).

In 1953, 2.29 million hectares were affected. This rose sharply in the early 2000s, peaking at 8.03 million hectares in 2004, before dropping to 3.38 million hectares in 2005.

In a memorandum to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Assam Government reported that floods from April to October 2022 claimed around 200 lives, impacted nearly 35 districts and 8.9 million people, and destroyed crops across 246,000 hectares.

The Flood Hazard Atlas further shows a sharp rise in flood impact between 1953 and 2005. Flood deaths rose from 37 in 1953 to 1,503 in 2005, with the highest toll in 1977 at 11,316 lives. Crop damage increased from 0.93 million hectares in 1953 to 2.24 million hectares in 2005.

Suspended in a vicious cycle

The constant flooding also results in land shifts in the char and chapori villages in the Brahmaputra basin.

They often disappear entirely.

In South Salmara-Mankachar district alone, at least 132 villages have been wiped out by floods and erosion, said Hafiz Ahmed, a Guwahati-based poet, originally from the riverine region.

“Nearly two million people from riverine regions have been internally displaced because of river erosion in Assam. When a village is destroyed, the residents seek refuge in another char or chapori, often travelling several kilometres in search of new habitable spots,” he added.

“Many, left homeless by floods, migrate to cities and live in slums, while most go back to the familiar char or chapori region because of no other option. They rebuild despite knowing the risks,” he added. “The cycle continues.”

When floods hit, families climb onto the ghats—seven or eight feet above ground—and wait for the flood to pass. They are suspended like this for days, unaware of who or what has survived the raging waters below.

They don’t wait for government help, which often arrives too little and too late.

“This has always been the case here,” Salema Khatun (53) from Bihagaon Chapori said, recalling the July 2007 floods. “The entire village fled, fearing for their lives, and sought shelter along the roads near Tezpur town, around 25 km away,” she added.

“It was only after a few days that the government provided shelter for the women and children in a school. We were given rice, pulses, oil, salt, and kerosene stoves to cook with, but staying there was extremely difficult.”

Salema Khatun, 53, from Bihagaon Chapori in Sonitpur district, Assam, cooks a meal at her workplace in Tezpur(Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

“There were no toilets and bathing facilities, and the water provided was dirty and unfit for drinking. There was no privacy. We stayed for a month until the water receded, then returned alone to our flood-ravaged village,” Khatun said.

Nawahar Ali, a teacher from Number 4 Sialmari village in Darrang district, said that ideally, villagers should be evacuated during floods, but this rarely happens.

\"Moreover, villagers also don't leave their homes thinking they might lose whatever little they have, and it is better to stay in the village and save as much as possible,\" he added.

Active climate-resilient policies and action

According to Syed Tahidur Rahman, Director of the Minority Affairs and Char Areas Development Department in Assam, the government issues a high alert when a flood is about to hit a region. Alerts are sent via SMS by the Assam State Disaster Management Authority, and official notices are shared with grassroots-level officials to inform communities about the impending floods.

“This usually happens 24 to 48 hours in advance or as soon as we receive information from the India Meteorological Department,” he said.

However, Rahman acknowledged that due to the “precarious geographical conditions of the riverine areas, it is not always easy to reach these communities when floods and erosion occur.”

In these remote villages, flood alerts rarely reach women like Parveen, who must scramble to protect their children and belongings against the rising water. It’s only when the waters enter the courtyard of their homes that they realise that it is time for them to move, the women said.

Experts say that government intervention to combat climate extremes typically includes disaster relief, embankment construction and repairs, some relocation efforts, and flood forecasting.

According to the Director of Research and Development at the Centre for Environment and Climate Action Foundation in Guwahati, Kamal Kumar Tanti, “The current efforts are simply not keeping pace with the escalating climate crisis in the char and chapori regions.”

\"We need a paradigm shift from reactive disaster management to proactive, climate-just adaptation and resilience building. This approach must fully integrate community participation and address the underlying vulnerabilities while also demanding stronger global action on emission reductions,” he said.

The climate scientist further said that enhanced early warning systems and evacuation infrastructure, like building multi-purpose raised platforms or flood shelters, are also critical to combat the climate extremes.

At the local level, Tanti said there is a need for community-led adaptation planning and climate-resilient agriculture. \"This includes promoting flood-resistant crops, employing floating agriculture techniques, and diversifying crops,” he said.

“Additionally, investing in ecological restoration—such as wetland conservation and strategic afforestation using appropriate native species—is essential,” Tanti added.

Arrested development

Floods in the char and chapori regions have long hindered development activities, leaving communities trapped in a cycle of vulnerability. The recurring devastation prevents any meaningful progress.

A look at the population matrix of these regions shows that the already-vulnerable Miya Muslim community — estimated at around 1.8 million — forms the majority in these areas. Other communities, including Mishing, Deori, Sonowal, Kochari, Nepali, and Bengali Hindus, also reside here.

\"These areas face extreme poverty, high illiteracy, and poor healthcare,\" said Ahmed.

In response, officials said development efforts are underway.

“We are focusing on building infrastructure — schools, toilets, hospitals — and providing agricultural support and solar panels to help these communities adapt,” said Syed Tahidur Rahman.

When asked whether these structures are at risk of being washed away during floods, Rahman said efforts are made to make them as flood-resilient as possible. “Building this infrastructure is important—it helps improve the quality of life for people in these vulnerable areas,” he added.

The government should also focus on skill development, including providing training and support for alternative, non-farm livelihoods that are less vulnerable to climate impacts, Tanti said.

“Until that happens,” Abdul Mazid (51), a former boatman and community leader from Bihagaon Chapori, said, “men will continue to migrate and women will continue to be the martyrs of climate disasters.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava

This story was produced as part of the 101Reporters Climate Change Reporting Grant.

Cover Photo - Sanu Begum, 30, from Assam's Bagaribari village, stands close to the bank of the Dhansiri River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra River (Photo - Maitreyee Boruah, 101Reporters)

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