Dhubri & Majuli Island (Assam), Sainj (Himachal Pradesh) & Kendrapara (Odisha): In 2024, floods in the turbulent Brahmaputra washed away Dharmendra Payun’s flimsy but traditional wooden lean-to—a chaang or a shed, built in the traditional style, on bamboo stilts.
Every year, Payun’s home is swallowed by floods, and he rebuilds it, as many in his community have for decades. Rebuilding has become harder, though, as growing erosion shrinks the Assamese riverine island of Majuli where the 39-year-old former rice farmer and others of his Mising tribe live.
So, Payun must build his home further inland, as he has five times in 15 years.
Each time, his family of three, a daughter and a wife, clambered aboard a jerry-rigged boat made of banana fronds and escaped to higher ground in Majuli.
Nestled between two arms of the Brahmaputra, Majuli has lost more than half its area over nearly four decades, and thousands have lost homes and land, as climate change has accelerated across the world and in India.
“We don't have any land left now, so we cannot grow our own bamboo and banana trees,” said Payun, his face composed, his voice weary, and his hands rough from working the soil of Majuli. “We have to buy land.”
“We wrote letters to the chief minister, the local MLA (legislator), deputy commissioner about how we need land, but we never received any response,” said Payun. “During elections, they promise us land and infrastructure but after elections, no action is taken.”
Pallav Gopal Jha, the deputy commissioner of Majuli Island in 2016-18 (when the letter was sent) said that the government had to approve rehabilitation and allotment of land.
“I believe at that time I must have made my own reports and sent it to the government of Assam,” said Jha. “In my memory, they did not respond back (sic).”
A Failed Promise
Natural disasters have displaced 56.5 million Indians over 15 years, from 2008 to 2023, according to data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, a leading source of data and analysis on internal displacement. On an average, at least 3.6 million Indians have been displaced annually since 2021.
The frequency and intensity of extreme climate events in India have increased by almost 200% since 2005. According to 2023 World Bank data, more than 80% of India's people live in districts that are at risk of climate-induced disasters.
The struggles of climate refugees exist beyond Odisha, Himachal Pradesh or Assam, where this story was reported. By 2100, 36 million Indians will likely live in chronically flooded areas. By 2050, 45 million Indians may be forced to migrate due to climate disasters.
The only law that directly addresses these issues, the Disaster Management Act, 2005 has largely failed, experts said. Even the more recent Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill, 2024—meant to address past shortcomings—has done little to ease the struggles of those displaced.
In 2024, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman referred to these lacunae and promised assistance to Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Uttarakhand and Sikkim.
“Himachal Pradesh suffered extensive losses due to floods last year,” Sitharaman said in Parliament. “Our government will provide assistance to the state for reconstruction and rehabilitation through multilateral development assistance.”
Nothing further has been heard of that promise.
Article 14 contacted Duni Chand Rana, Himachal Pradesh’s director and special secretary for disaster management, via phone calls and WhatsApp messages on 25, 28, 29 and 30 April, but he did not respond to queries.
We also tried to contact Onkar Chand Sharma, additional chief secretary (revenue department) to the government of Himachal Pradesh, on his phone multiple times between 28 April and 1 May, He did not respond to calls or messages on WhatsApp.
A 20-Year-Old Law
The Disaster Management Act empowers union, state and local governments to prevent, prepare or respond to natural disasters.
“Even though the Disaster Management Act is drafted with every minute detail, it still lacks implementation,” said Manisha Badoni, an environmental lawyer at The Enviro Legal Defence Firm. “The execution really needs to be strengthened.”
Guman Singh, national coordinator, Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, an apex body of many local grassroots movements, said the law not only falls short during the management of the disaster, “but also in the preparedness aspect, in terms of prevention of disasters and mitigation techniques”.
Inconsistencies in implementing the law can be witnessed in cases across India.
In Jhopara village of south-western Assam’s Dhubri district, for example, where villagers face extreme hardships during the monsoon, the 2,000 residents still lack adequate shelter and live without food supply during floods. They received no help in rebuilding their homes in the aftermath of floods in August 2024.
Jahida Khatun, a 23-year-old from Jhopara, said floods entirely submerge her village every year in the months of May, June and July.
During the annual flood, Dhubri is one of Assam’s worst-hit districts. According to a July 2024 report released by ReliefWeb, an information service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 80,000 people lost their homes that year in Dhubri alone, and struggled to find shelter and food.
A shelter measuring about 200 sq ft, built by the government in 2022 in her village, is the only pucca or permanent structure in the area, but it cannot shelter the village’s entire population. Year after year, Khatun and the other residents of Jhopara go without food for days during the floods.
The nearest hospital is 15 km away and there is no health centre in the village.
“We have to make the house repeatedly and receive no help from the government to reconstruct it,” said Khatun. “We need help to build our houses elsewhere, but we don't get anything.”
Section 12 of the Disaster Management Act states that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), headed by the prime minister of India, shall provide ‘minimum requirements’ such as shelter, food, drinking water, medical cover and sanitation to persons affected by disaster, including special provisions for widows and orphans and ex gratia for any loss of life. Similarly, section 24 (d) empowers the state executive committee established under the law to provide shelter, food, drinking water, essential provisions, healthcare and services “in accordance with the standards laid down” by the NDMA and state disaster management authority.
District-level disaster management authorities, typically led by the office of the district collector, are also mandated to provide shelter, food, drinking water and essential provisions, healthcare and services as per section 34 (e) of the Act.
Sections 38 (k) and 39 (f) state that the state government must carry out “rehabilitation and reconstruction” for victims of disasters, while section 41 (d) mandates local authorities to do the same.
The ground reality, however, is that victims in multiple states, including those like Khatun, have reported being unable to avail food, shelter and healthcare in the aftermath of the floods, notwithstanding the provisions of the law.
A 2024 Amendment Falls Short
The Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill 2024, passed by both houses of Parliament in the last week of March 2025, made the question of compensation for disasters more vexed.
Section 61 of the Disaster Management Act addresses payment of compensation without discrimination, whereas section 66 lists out the conditions and rules for receiving compensation. However, as per the 2024 amendment, the word ‘compensation’ was omitted from section 61 of the principal act, automatically nullifying section 66 as well.
“Governments provide only relief and not compensation to the victims of disasters,” the appended notes on the various clauses of the amendment bill said.
Section 2 (xii) of the amendment bill defined ‘rehabilitation’ as ‘the restoration of basic service, facility, and capacity for the functioning of a disaster-affected community’. However, in many cases people need to be permanently relocated as they are left landless, for example the landslide that occurred in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh in 2023, which left 8,500 people landless.
The amendments to the law did not include any provision for relocation and resettlement.
Negligence And A Funds Crunch
Tabling the annual budget estimates in Parliament in July 2024, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Himachal Pradesh, a state ruled by the Congress party, would get “multilateral development assistance” from the union government.
Chief minister of Himachal Pradesh Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu said in Shimla while addressing media and reporters on 23 July 2024 that while the Centre promised assistance for flood and landslides-hit Uttarakhand and Sikkim as well, they used the term ‘multilateral development assistance’ for disaster aid to Himachal Pradesh.
The state government of Himachal Pradesh repeatedly (after floods and landslides in July and August 2024) sought financial aid from the Centre. After the floods caused by heavy rain in July and August 2023, while drawing up the state’s budget outlays, it allocated Rs 4,500 crore for victims of floods.
In December 2024, Sukhu said to media persons at a World AIDS Day programme in Shimla that the state had received no disaster-related aid from the Centre that year. (The previous year, central assistance of Rs 433.70 crore was received for disaster relief work.)
The state government had in October 2024 asked for a sum of Rs 10,000 crore as aid after a PDNA (post-disaster need assessment) exercise. “We should have at least got Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 crore immediately on the lines of other states,” Sukhu was reported as saying.
Speaking in Rajya Sabha on 25 March 2025 during the debate on the 2024 amendment bill, union minister for home affairs Amit Shah said the government had “given more money than the prescribed amount” to states for disaster management. The bill was passed by the upper house later that day.
Mohammad Saved is a man who lives with his family in Sainj village, Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh, where flash floods in July 2024 after a series of cloudbursts led to widespread devastation of homes and farm land.
Without substantial government help, Saved had no option but to take huge loans to rebuild his house on the same flood-prone land because he could not afford land elsewhere. Today, he has an outstanding debt of Rs 10 lakh, and lives in fear that another flood could take it all again.
Section 13 of the Disaster Management Act empowers the NDMA to provide relief in terms of loan repayment for victims of disaster. However, this section of the law has also been poorly implemented, said Singh.
He said the Himachal Pradesh state government had been providing some relief (up to Rs 5,000 - Rs 10,000 per family) to those who lost homes and livelihoods in the floods. However, without assistance from the union government, the authorities struggled to provide monetary compensation, adequate food supplies and reconstruction of homes.
A Last Refuge In Forests
In Assam, some displaced people have occupied forest land in the upper reaches of riverine areas after losing homes to inundation.
In 2023, 25 families were evicted from Runikhata Range in Chirang district; 33 families were evicted from Ultapani in Kokrajhar, among others. Eventually, 250 families occupied land in the Lumsung reserve forest. Technically, this occupation is not legal and these displaced families could be evicted, said Tirtha Prasad Saikia, director, North-East Affected Area Development Society, a volunteer-led grassroot development organisation. "I have seen families who have been building illegal shelters in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. It is just surviving on their end,” he said. “Until they are resettled elsewhere, their existence is very temporary.”
The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 both prohibit non-forest practices on land categorised by the government as forest. The amendment redefines what ‘non-forest’ activities are, allowing infrastructural development and eco-tourism projects on forest land if approved by the union government. However, use of forest land for resettlement and rehabilitation is not permitted.
“About 68% of land in Himachal Pradesh is forest land. The regular revenue land is very little in the state, and is mostly encroached under urbanisation or building of roads,” Singh said.
“Where will people who have lost their lands in erosion and landslides go?”
Particularly for indigenous communities, also the most vulnerable to disasters, occupying forest land may often be a recourse upon being forced out of traditional homes by disasters.
Saikia said these communities have traditionally coexisted with nature. “The nature and the characteristic of indigenous communities is by living in a co-existing situation in the forest area where they access biodiversity and ecosystem,” he said.
Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, an informal network focused on rivers, communities and water infrastructure, said that in some cases exceptions need to be made. For climate change-induced disasters, the law must mandate and enable relocation, he said.
“If it can be established that there is no other option, then the forest advisory committee should consider it," he added. The forest advisory committee is a statutory body established under the Forest Conservation Act to advise the government on diversion of forest land for non-forestry uses.
Erosion: Fears About Future Losses
Sudhip Dalapati of Kendrapara district in eastern Odisha said that the Baitarani river, which originally ran about 1 km away from his village (around 40 years ago) Rajendranarayanpur, was now just 400 metres away in 2025.
“Every year, 20-30 feet of land is lost due to erosion and the government has not been taking any action to prevent this,” he said. Placing rocks by the river or building concrete walls could have prevented the erosion, he said.
With neither shelter homes nor healthcare centres nearby, Dalapati and other residents of his village are worried that erosion along the river as well as coastal erosion could lead to loss of land. Basanti Sarangi, program manager at the Orissa State Volunteers and Social Workers Association, a non-profit organisation, said fishermen and farmers are losing their homes, boats and livelihood due to coastal erosion and relocation is necessary for them.
As of April 2024, 17,049 people of 571 families from Satabhaya gram panchayat, a coastal village in Kendrapara, lived in the Bagapatia rehabilitation colony. However, an estimated 235 families from Satabhaya and Magarkandha were still living under constant threat of losing their land and livelihood to sea erosion.
(Suhani Prakash is a journalist writing on human rights, the environment, and gender.)
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