Monsoon in Assam creates a state of pleasure and grief for its people. Primarily an agricultural kingdom, the farmers of this vicinity largely depend on the rain Gods for cultivation. The floodwater rejuvenates the rural fields via the deposition of fertile silt. The perennial showers hold for months within the hills and the valley, which causes the Brahmaputra, alongside its severa tributaries, to overflow its banks and flood the entire region. This year, 25 districts and over 32 lakh humans have suffered floods, and over 100 humans have misplaced their lives. However, this problem, alas and unsurprisingly, fails to seize the countrywide limelight.

Since my youth, no unmarried monsoon season has surpassed, while the issue of floods hasn’t been raised. Media and political events create a hue and cry to grab a gentle following; however, their tune adjustments once the flood subsides. For them, the difficulty is seasonal, and regularly the tragedy is used to push their timetable. This made me curious to visit some flood-affected regions and maintain the real picture. Hence, I enrolled as an intern with a nearby NGO named JHAI Foundation, specializing in catastrophe danger-discount interventions in flood-affected char areas (transient river islands).

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There wasn’t any formal selection process for the internship. However, the JHAI Foundation, which became set up with humane motives of concord among human beings and nature, calls for interns with a thorough attitude to enhance the socio-political scenario. Interns must have a fundamental knowledge of research tools with Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), Personal Interviews (PIs), and map-making sports. However, I had a vague concept about such study mechanisms; it became best after the internship that I discovered how to use them. There turned into a telephonic interview at some stage in which I gave my creation, after which I became asked if I’d be capable of paintings beneath hard situations because the internship required extensive traveling and surveying 4 of the worst flood-affected districts at some stage in the peak monsoon season.

Our crew consisted of a senior discipline researcher, a photographer, and a word taker (who became me). Our principal goal was to extract targeted records of the flood-affected areas’ traditional flood coping mechanisms. To correctly carry out the gathering of information, the JHAI Foundation organized a few questionnaires which contained questions about primary health care centers, food management mechanisms, architectural variations, sanitation problems, year-lengthy crop rotational application, cattle difficulty, traditional boat and bridge constructing strategies, the plight of girls, and so on.

First, we have been required to accumulate the assigned villages’ reputable geographical and demographic statistics. After that, we were required to go to the designated villages with the sphere officials. As a notice taker, my work changed into filing, making sports notes, and looking at the talk. In addition to this, I became required to take non-public interviews. After those traditional sports, we surveyed the villages and their borders if time authorized us. After returning from the villages, we were required to make transcripts of the recorded records of audio pieces, which we submitted to the inspiration. After making transcripts, we were capable of carrying out mild revolutionary ideas; one such prominent idea was the portable hearth floating method with the aid of inflating the lungi of lower Assam and the multi-storeyed Changs or platforms in the Chang Ghar (a residence on a raised platform from the ground, much like stilt homes).

In the primary fifteen days, I saw the tough truth of those areas and their population. Regular loss of crops and human lives renders the villagers helpless and dwarfs their socioeconomic prospects. They rarely receive any rehabilitation for their failures. These villages stay reduced from the doors globally for two to a few months. Sometimes, life will become so depressing that they can even have the funds for a proper meal, and they should make do with a handful of rice every day. In seeking to consume water, they must wander away to remote places. If they fail to discover a source, they lodge to drinking floodwater. We couldn’t locate a single sanitary restroom; the few villages where toilets were built below the Swachh Bharat Mission had been inundated by floodwater. It becomes traumatizing enjoy finding that the water our bodies where the sufferers had been defecating was also used as a source of drinking and cooking water.

Health care in these areas is another predominant problem. Most of them nevertheless follow conventional practices, some are powerful, and some aren’t. In one of the debts, while we enquired about the fitness care facilities, the interviewee responded: “We have our traditional healers; some of our humans additionally hotel to prayers as a number one solution.” A strip of Chloroquine tablet or a pouch of ORS is a luxury even after 70 years of our country’s independence. A health facility is close to the village; however, the physician is rarely to be had at some point during the flood season. The villagers lamented, “We have even arranged energy for our health care middle, but the doctor usually comes up with a new excuse, and so our people have misplaced religion in the fitness care middle.” It’s no longer that these humans are reluctant to technique the clinical facilities. However, they don’t have any choice other than counting on conventional treatments.

The revel in the char villages in the Barpeta district became an eye-opener for me. Human beings living in one’s regions lead a very harsh lifestyle: from being often displaced and economically deprived to being politically victimized. The authority’s aid in their hours of distress is minimal. Moreover, the tendency to brand these vulnerable people as illegal Bangladesh immigrants provides for their woes. However, no matter these types of testimonies of suffering and ache, there are a few initiatives and interventions through some groups that display hope. In the Majuli district, humans have begun exploring revolutionary and flood-resilient livelihood alternatives like cage lifestyle for fish farming, floating lawns for vegetable cultivation, etc. JHAI Foundation, the corporation I interned in, has been running to create a model for developing the char areas specializing in catastrophe resilient, haven, organic home gardens, and floating training for flood-affected kids.