Floodwaters have submerged Sivasagar villages, forcing families onto highways as homes, crops and livestock remain underwater
The water has not gone down. That is the first thing you notice on entering the flood-affected belt of Sivasagar district. GPlus visited the worst-hit pockets of the district to assess the situation on the ground. Roads have turned into rivers, fields into lakes, and entire families are now living along the national highway under sheets of plastic tarp.
ALSO READ: Amid Assam Floods, Communities Unite to Help Those in Need
The Dikhow river, flowing well above the danger mark for days, has pushed thousands of people out of their homes across Nazira and surrounding areas. During GPlus' ground visit to some of the worst-hit pockets, including Betbari, the situation on the ground revealed a crisis far beyond what official numbers can convey.
The visit began in Betbari, a low-lying farming region that has borne the brunt of the flooding this year. The national highway has become a strip of makeshift settlements, with families who once lived in permanent homes now forced to camp under tarpaulin sheets because the highway remains the only patch of dry or semi-dry land available.
Children run barefoot between the tents. Cooking is done on small mud stoves lit between rain showers. There is little privacy, inadequate sanitation and uncertainty over how long families will have to remain there.
Not everyone has found refuge along the main road. In the interior areas, away from accessible routes, many residents have taken shelter wherever they could find higher ground. Several families have moved into two-storey buildings near their villages, sharing upper floors with neighbours while the ground floors remain submerged. Although this offers some protection from the rising waters, life remains difficult, with families confined to limited spaces, cut off from essential supplies and waiting for rescue teams to reach them.
Boats have become a lifeline for thousands. Teams from the State Disaster Response Force and National Disaster Response Force have been working across the worst-affected areas, rescuing stranded residents and shifting them to safer locations.
Survivors said the danger was not only due to the depth of the water but also the force of the current. In several areas, residents said the flow was strong enough to sweep away anyone caught in it, making survival difficult even for experienced swimmers.
A woman living in one of the roadside shelters said the flood had taken away everything she owned.
“We lost everything,” she said. “Ducks, chickens, cows, goats; everything was washed away by the floods.”
She spoke calmly, describing losses that had left her family with little more than the belongings they carried while escaping the flood. Around her, other families nodded in agreement, as if her story was not an isolated tragedy but a shared reality for those now living through the aftermath of the floods.
The scale of the disaster becomes clearer through conversations with residents who have witnessed floods before. In Ligiripukhuri near Nazira, a man who has spent his entire life along the banks of the Dikhow recalled the flood of 1992 and said the current situation was unlike anything he had experienced.
“The last time I saw a flood was in 1992. The water was only knee-deep, not even close to what we are seeing now,” he said.
According to him, floodwaters this year rose to nearly eight feet in parts of the village, leaving residents with little option but to move to rooftops, trees or any available high ground.
Agriculture, the backbone of the region’s economy, has suffered a major setback. In the fields around Betbari, a tractor stood half-submerged in muddy water, abandoned in what should have been a paddy field.
The farmer who owned it said he had no time to move the vehicle after the water began rising. It was the peak farming season, and he had left the tractor outside expecting normal rainfall, not a sudden rise in floodwaters. By the time the situation worsened, it was already too late.
He does not know when he will recover the vehicle or whether it will still be usable.
The losses extend beyond livestock and agricultural equipment. Inside several submerged homes, household items including refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, cars and motorcycles were covered in layers of brown silt. For many families, these were possessions accumulated over years of hard work and lost within days.
One family spoke of losing nearly all their valuables to the floodwaters. The woman of the house had spent years hand-weaving muga and silk textiles, the traditional fabrics for which Sivasagar is known. Those pieces were washed away, along with old family photographs that had preserved memories of decades gone by.
While relief and compensation may help families replace household items such as refrigerators or farming equipment, they cannot bring back a grandparent’s photograph or restore months of painstaking handwoven work that carried both personal and cultural value.
In Nazira, another resident described watching the Dikhow river during the worst phase of the flooding. For him, the most difficult part was seeing a river he had known all his life transform into a dangerous force within hours.
The scale of destruction was evident in Bihubor grant area, where locals said an entire village, Nepali Khuti, was washed away. A settlement that had existed for generations disappeared under the force of the floodwaters, leaving behind only stretches of water where homes and land once stood.
Despite the scale of the disaster, the situation remains difficult to capture through numbers alone. According to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority, more than 3.10 lakh people remain affected by floods across eleven districts, with Sivasagar accounting for nearly 1.58 lakh affected people.
The Central Water Commission has also placed the Dikhow river in the severe flood category, while authorities continue to advise residents to stay away from riverbanks.
The figures highlight the scale of the crisis, but they do not fully explain what it means for a family to cook beside a highway because their home is underwater, or to watch years of work disappear within days.
During GPlus' interaction with affected residents, what remained most striking was the resilience of the people living through the disaster. Their voices carry exhaustion, but not panic; only a quiet account of what they have lost and what they still hope to rebuild.
Relief camps have been opened and rescue teams continue operations across affected areas. But for families still living beside the highway in Betbari, recovery remains uncertain, much like the floodwaters that continue to cover their fields.