Dhemaji, Assam, India. A villager looking at a road washed away by water at Hesuli village of Dhemaji district, Assam in September 2020. Image via Flickr by Climate Centre. CC BY-NC 2.0. The Brahmaputra River and its tributaries have shaped the landscape of India’s northeastern region for centuries, but this year once again, monsoon season brought with it massive flooding in the Assam Valley. Swelling rivers inundated several parts of the state, causing populations living alongside the river basin to shift multiple times. Now, in the face of failing flood management and protection structures, local village communities and volunteer groups are stepping up and helping themselves when it comes to relief and rehabilitation efforts. The environmentally focused news site Down to Earth published a story on the plight of Mas Dihiri village, located in the Dhemaji district of Assam. Here, the Kumutiya River, one of the Bramhaputra’s tributaries, is given to shift its course rapidly — with devastating results. The river has shifted course by as much as three kilometers since 1960, and stories like these are not standalone but, rather, scattered across the length and breadth of Assam. When the village of Majdolopa, for instance, experienced another sudden flood surge in July 2020, people found themselves trapped as the Brahmaputra swelled after incessant rains. The change in rainfall patterns and the resulting floods point towards an interconnectedness with climate change. In October, the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) released a report titled, Mapping India’s Climate Vulnerability – A District-level Assessment, based on its analysis of 646 districts across India. It ranks Assam among five states that are most vulnerable to calamities such as floods, droughts and cyclones, with four of its districts — Dhemaji, Nangaon, Darrang and Lakhimpur — featuring amongst the 20 most vulnerable spots in the country. The predominant reason for global warming and interlinked climate change has been laid at the doorstep of CO2 emissions. India is one of the prominent contributors to this problem, owing to rapid industrialization and urbanization. According to Nature Climate Change journal, India emitted 2.65 billion tonnes CO2 between 2016 and 2019. Climate change means that snow melts faster, adding to the volume of water in snow-fed rivers at their origin itself. In addition, the total number of rainfall days during the monsoon has decreased, but the intensity of rainfall on these days has increased. Cloudbursts and intense rainfall result in flash floods with little to no warning. Citizens and policymakers alike have acknowledged the evident crisis in the valley: Nagaon hon'ble MP @pradyutbordoloi sir's fierce speech in the parliament, raising voice for the climate refugees of Assam who settled down near by the river sides of Assam and being attacked by natural calamities, which has been worsen due to climate change(1/2) pic.twitter.com/jrzPyp0PXJ — Adv Mumtaz Begum (@i_am_mumtaz) December 4, 2021 Flash floods in Assam, Cloud bursts in Kerala, heavy rain in Uttarakhand, rains in Delhi. And there is NO climate change. Get real, read the writing on the wall. Act. — Vimlendu Jha विमलेंदु झा (@vimlendu) October 17, 2021 Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are affected by these floods, losing their lives, homes, crops and livestock. By September 2021, the floods had already affected more than 600,000 people across several districts, claiming five lives in the process. People who live along the river basin are often forced to take refuge in relief camps for weeks on end, before returning to the shambles of what once represented their lives. From 2020 to 2021, the narrative has hardly changed; micro-blogging sites like Twitter are littered with tales of the misery of flooding in Assam, and noting its painful effects — from displacement to food insecurity: Upto 3.41 lakh people affected due to heavy rainfall &floods in #Assam #India 40 deaths reported. Sincere request to all the leaders to plz take #ClimateChange seriously &withdraw all dilutions of norms that r meant for environmental conservation.@narendramodi @GretaThunberg https://t.co/s7G427lKhM pic.twitter.com/82n8DOZHkd — Fridays For Future India (@FFFIndia) July 11, 2020 Increasing temperatures, variable rainfalls and loss of agricultural land due to flash floods are expected to reduce crop yields thereby causing food scarcity. #DRRday #OnlyTogether #OXFAM #ASDMA #climatechange pic.twitter.com/yulLBmG26m — Assam State Disaster Management Authority (@sdma_assam) October 23, 2021 As the crisis in Assam has deepened, so has people's commitment to finding new ways of adapting.