Women in Assam, often overlooked, are engaged in a solitary and challenging struggle against severe flooding.

B O Correspondent: “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.

“The water rose three feet above the ground. One wall of my hut collapsed under the heavy rain and strong winds. Floods inundated our farmlands, destroyed our crops,” 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. Floods destroy our homes and fields, 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 Assam’s 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, it forced most men to migrate.

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