The Brahmaputra is considered a moody river, meandering through the Tibetan plateau, almost turning on its head before entering Arunachal P...

The Brahmaputra is considered a moody river, meandering through the Tibetan plateau, almost turning on its head before entering Arunachal Pradesh in India, rampaging through the Eastern Himalayas, gushing and braiding through the plains of Assam and Bangladesh, before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. It is joined by tributaries from Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan, some of them larger than many of the rivers flowing in other parts of India. The floods that occur annually in the alluvial plains of the Brahmaputra river basin are often termed as catastrophic because of the life and property they destroy, the suffering they cause.
We know that these floods occur annually, are catastrophic, and that the underlying causes of these floods being catastrophic have been deliberated on by scholars for years, even decades. The question, however, is if these catastrophic floods are now considered catastrophic enough or are increasingly viewed as the new normal. It is often said that floods are a reality of life for communities living in the alluvial plains of the Brahmaputra basin, which is why these plains are also called “floodplains”, shaped by annual flood cycles over a period of time.
The Brahmaputra is the moody master sculptor, whose clay is...