Adaptive capacities for women’s mobility during displacement after floods and riverbank erosion in Assam, India

ABSTRACT

Recurring floods and erosion result in displacement, which adversely impacts women who are ‘left behind’ when men migrate. Policy and programme measures for disaster response and climate adaptation often perceive women as homogenous, vulnerable groups, instead of addressing underlying structural and conceptual barriers and strengthening their adaptive capacities to disasters and displacement. This article draws upon a political ecology lens to understand gendered recovery processes following disasters across four districts in Assam, northeastern India using empirical research from 2012 to 2018. The findings add nuances to the displacements of women in Assam as being ‘climate-induced’ by showing the different mechanisms of displacement and how it impacts particular groups of women, as well as their differential ways of coping with these changes. This article draws on sustained long-term qualitative research among rural villagers, particularly women, in Assam where migration is connected to riverbank erosion, exacerbated by the construction of a new embankment, and disrupted due to waterlogging caused by embankments and government relocation schemes in order to construct further dams/embankments.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The author would like to thank the peer-reviewers for articulating these aspects of floods in Assam and the deltaic region

2 Muslims from Bangladesh were subjected to social isolation, as ‘unwarranted immigration from Bangladesh’ emerged to be the dominant narrative constructed by the Indian state. Although some of the respondents were Muslim women they would not openly profess to having migrated from Bangladesh. Other parts of Assam which is not included in this paper did face violent attacks against those considered to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, which only was exacerbated in the run up to the National Registry of Citizens, 2020.

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Sneha Krishnan

Sneha Krishnan is Associate Professor at Jindal School of Environment and Sustainability, OP Jindal Global University, and Founder-Director at ETCH Consultancy Services, India. This work builds on doctoral research undertaken in Assam since 2012. Her work focuses on humanitarian response, disaster resilience, technological innovations, environmental health and gender aspects.