Book review: Mitul Baruah. 2023. Slow Disaster: Political Ecology of Hazards and Everyday Life in the Brahmaputra Valley,Assam

Centred on the twin processes of flooding and riverbank erosion (gara khohonia), this book by Mitul Baruah investigates the political ecology of disaster and vulnerability in Majuli river island in the Brahmaputra valley, Assam. The book provides a nuanced understanding of flood and erosion as ‘intertwined phenomena’ and ‘causally linked’ (p. 6) to historical, political and ecological processes. “The author uses ‘slow disaster’—a concept with varied meanings—to explain the island’s slow transformation which is often overlooked or to refer to the ‘low-intensity floods’’’ occurring several times a year ‘reshaping the island bit-by-bit’ (p. 39). Distancing from existing frameworks such as ‘creeping environmental phenomena’ (CEP), which Baruah considers narrow and linear, slow disaster pays attention to biophysical, social and anthropogenic forces. The book explores the political economy of the colonial state, the processes of building hydraulic infrastructures and their long-term impact on the floodplains of the Brahmaputra Valley. The adverse impact of such measures is visible in the wetland ecosystem of Majuli, which has either wholly disappeared or languishes in a degraded condition.

Divided into five chapters, the first chapter offers a natural history of the island’s geological formation, which is shaped by fluvial processes. Presented as an ethnographic account, the book dwells on the living memory of flood, devastations, loss and recovery. The author’s location as a habitant is used as an ethnographic tool to map disaster and displacement visually. The second chapter delineates reconfiguring geographies via natural and anthropogenic processes. It provides an extensive description of Majuli’s unique ecosystem, the ‘wetland ecology’, by outlining the diversity of the wetlands and their gradual withering due to erosion and human intrusion. Over the years, these wetlands have transformed from a lively and vibrant wetland (beel) to a degraded state (pitani) due to ‘silt deposition’ and ‘accumulation of weeds’ or are clogged with water hyacinth (pp. 40–44). Further, the chapter delves into people’s experience of displacement within the island; to demonstrate, Baruah cites that between the 1970 and 1980s, Ahatguri Mouza, a historical site of neo-Vaishnavism, disappeared entirely, leaving only a few villages and chaporis (smaller islands/sandbars) behind. The resultant outcome is outmigration and rehabilitation that regularly reproduces Majuli’s landscape both demographically and culturally.

The third chapter critically investigates embankments as flood control infrastructure, the most common measure in colonial and post-colonial states. The state’s systematic intervention and control approach contradicts the local perspectives on land, river and water. In this context, Baruah sees embankments as the ‘elixir to flood control’ (p. 62) and the ‘state’s fetish’ (p. 65), which gives a ‘false sense of security’ to the people (p. 69), calling the disastrous conditions of floods, an infrastructure induced vulnerability. While noting the new crisis on the island, Baruah documents a new phenomenon, that is, the island’s division into countryside and riverside due to the construction of embankments. Instead of providing protection, as he argues, they have created an ecological crisis and reshaped local ecologies, breaking social harmony on the island. Understanding such situations requires a comprehensive and holistic approach towards floods and erosion, which is lacking in the state’s strategies that only address the problems. Outlining the involvements of two agencies, namely the state and the central governments, the book details the ensuing conflict between the state and the locals. It shows how hydraulic infrastructures obstruct local activities and amplify vulnerabilities, thus augmenting the role of non-state actors in contesting and negotiating the everyday state, which is ‘translocal’ and ‘multivalent’ (p. 78).

Chapter four outlines the political ecology of livelihoods and focuses on their crises, decline and diversification in the island. For that, the book looks at the transformations of three traditional livelihoods of rural communities: agriculture, fishery and pottery. Agricultural production and its relation to land is a complex phenomenon and, as Baruah argues, is beyond the traditional framework of landholdings, as land in Majuli ‘erodes, disappears and relocates’ (p. 90). Instead, agrarian livelihoods are entangled in caste and social relations. However, the author avoids exploring the complexities of caste and land relations at greater length, emphasising instead biophysical, environmental and political questions. For instance, changes in the rain pattern and lack of monsoon floodwater/raw water (na-pani/kesa pani), along with embankment confinements, have impacted fishery at the everyday and commercial levels. Fishery and fishing as organised labour are managed between local actors and Bihari migrant labourers, whose relationships are determined by political uprisings such as the Assam movement of the 1980s. Similarly, a steady decline in the pottery industry due to floods and riverbank erosion is concerning since it signals a new form of vulnerability. Diversification of livelihoods in such situations is the islanders’ way of dealing with anxiety and stress, alongside their ingenuity and survival strategy.

The fifth and last chapter discusses the roles of non-state actors, civil society organisations and elite members in shaping anti-erosion activities and social mobilisations through popular activism epitomised by petitions as a form of protest. Everyday resistance of the riverine communities reflects subaltern politics expressed in various forms. A common practice of resistance in the riverside villages is falling back on rituals offered to the Brahmaputra, a form of villagers’ dissent against the state’s failure in protecting Majuli. Lastly, the author submits that a more profound reflection is urgent for a mindful outlook towards disasters and displacement.

Using locals’ narratives as the key tool, the book promises a newer form of post-colonial ethnographic writing. The author’s choice and the use of colloquial Assamese words/terms set a distinct tone for an ethnography, emphasising the islanders’ interpretations and construction of knowledge of Majuli about floods, erosion and protection. The book will interest scholars working on the political ecology of hazards and infrastructural vulnerability.