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Jute in the Brahmaputra Valley: The making of flood control in twentieth-century Assam*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

ARUPJYOTI SAIKIA
ARUPJYOTI SAIKIA*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Assam, India Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Flood protection in the Brahmaputra's floodplains began rather late and was implemented precisely to protect the important commercial crop of jute. To begin with, in the early twentieth century, after a long wait and much speculation, action was finally taken to make the Brahmaputra's floodplains more productive to the British Empire. Soon the commercial production of jute began in the floodplains. This article explains how the Brahmaputra's floodplains were converted into the British empire's eastern-most jute frontier. The article also explains the political economy of flood management in Assam in the second half of the twentieth century. Further, explaining the shifting relations between state, capital, and floodplain, the article shows how these schemes achieved only partial success and at the cost irreversible ecological damage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 5 , September 2015 , pp. 1405 - 1441
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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107 The valley's floodplain remained as one of India's most flooded places. In India during 1953–1987 the average total area affected by annual flooding was 7.66 million hectares; 31.84 million people were affected; and Rs. 7,680 million was the total damage to crops, houses, and other public utilities. Agarwal and Narain, Floods, Floodplains and Environmental Myths, p. 2.

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