In Between River and the Big Gates: How Sluice Gates are shaping floods in Assam’s Katigorah!

In Between River and the Big Gates: How Sluice Gates are shaping floods in Assam’s Katigorah!

YUBARAJ DAS

For villagers in Katigorah in Assam’s Cachar district, floods were once perceived as a season of abundance. When the River Barak spilled over its banks each monsoon, it brought alluvium (Pollash/Polish Mati) for agriculture, replenished wetlands with fish and acted as a natural cleanser for the riverine floodplains. Most communities depended on this seasonal inundation for their domestic, manufacturing and agricultural activities.

However, today floods and river bank erosion have become a perennial phenomena with high intensity and frequency, turning into an everyday form of disaster that the riverine must constantly contend with.

Local residents point to a key reason: a series of Sluice Gates constructed along the waterways that have disconnected the main river from its sub-channels and networks of wetlands that once functioned as natural flood buffers.

This shift – from flood as resource to flood as calamity – captures the broader transformation that the Barak River Basin went through over the past two decades, where the relationship between the river, its floodplain and wetland ecosystem has been significantly altered and disrupted.

A Basin shaped by Floods

The Barak River Basin is the second-largest river system in Assam. Originating in Manipur, the river flows through Assam for about 225 km before bifurcating into the Kushiyara and Surma as it enters Bangladesh. Along its course, it is joined by several north and south bank tributaries, including the Jiri, Chiri, Madhura, Jatinga, Sonai, Ghagra, Dhaleswari and Katakhal.

Cachar district sits at the heart of this basin and is vulnerable to flooding because of its unique ecological and geographical character. The district lies in a high monsoon rainfall zone, with erodible upper catchments, active seismicity, with heavy sediment loads that makes flooding and erosion a natural phenomenon in the basin.

Administratively, the district comprises five revenue circles: Lakhipur, Sonai, Silchar, Udharbond and Katigorah. Among these, Katigorah is the most vulnerable and has been classified as a “very high” flood-risk zone by the Government of Assam. Moreover, its location as a riverine border between India and Bangladesh adds a transboundary dimension to flood-related impacts.

Contemporary flood management relies predominantly on short-term structural measures such as concrete porcupines, geobags, sluice gates and embankments as ‘solutions’ to control floods. While these structures may offer relief in temporarily containing minor floods, they often fail when water flow increases significantly. This was evident more recently during the 2024 floods in Cachar, when three successive floods triggered multiple embankment breaches across the district. According to the Assam Flood Memorandum Report 2024, approximately 2,41,576 people across 311 villages were affected across all revenue circles.

[Collection of fish from River Barak. Photo Author]

Wetlands in Peril

In Katigorah, there are numerous freshwater wetlands, both seasonal and perennial, with  linkages with the River Barak and Surma. This natural drainage system kept floods short and damage limited. However, over the past decades, these ecological linkages have been severely disrupted.

A recent study documenting ‘Floodplain ecosystem services found that the hydrological regime and biophysical environment of the Barak Basin have been substantially altered due to numerous anthropogenic activities. These changes have triggered shifts in the floodplain ecosystem’s functions and services.

A fisherman from Chandinagar said, “Earlier, I used to catch a variety of local maas (fish) such as Puti (pool barb), Seng (barca snakehead) and Tengra (Mystus tengara) from the beels,” he said. “Now, most of the beels are silted and prolonged waterlogging has led to a decline in fish populations.”

Moreover, with frequent floods, the conditions of fishing have also changed. A fisherman from Saidpur Part III, said “when the floodwaters come, it arrives with such forceful waves (jaal taranga) that it becomes extremely risky for us to enter the beels….these jaal taranga also impact fish spawning (projomo) and cause damage to our houses”.

Similarly, a farmer from Niz Harinagar said -“before the construction of the sluice gates, villagers would fish during the flood season and as the waters receded, they cultivated leafy greens and vegetables around the beels and haor areas” he said. “But now, water continues to remain long after the flood season. Such conditions have forced villagers to take up daily wage labour at comparatively lower rates.”

[Damage due to Jaal taranga. Photo Author]

[Waterlogged fields in Katigorah, Photo Author]

Trapped in between the River and the Big Gates

Under the Water Resources Division (WRD), there are six sluice gates in Katigorah: Kinna Khel, Sadirkhel, Gumra, Kherua, Baleswar and Puska sluice gates. These structures were initially constructed the year 2000 by the Brahmaputra Board- later handed over to the WRD in 2017^[1]– to regulate water flow between the Barak River and Surma and the adjoining villages.

[Kinnakhel Sluice gate with Sediment deposition. Photo Author]

However, over time, poor maintenance has rendered many of these gates dysfunctional, levers appeared poorly greased and rust had visibly spread across parts of the gate structures. Leaving them jammed and unable to operate effectively during critical periods of flooding.

Moreover, since the gates are entirely manual, operating them also required substantial time and labour. A villager living near the Kinna Khel sluice gate said- “It takes about 10 to 12 labourers working for hours just to lift the gate by one inch,”

Residents near Sadirkhel sluice gate describe a similar situation, “The floodgates remain closed all the time. Many gates are dysfunctional – water from the hilly rivers cannot reach the main river….. it gets trapped in the fields.”

An official from the Katigorah Water Resources Division, when contacted, acknowledged that some of the floodgates require maintenance repair and added that “being a border region, and with sluice gates located along the border, the operation and opening of floodgates is subject to “regulatory measures” from the border authorities and cannot be opened without clearance,” the official said.

This result is a compounding crisis: water that should pass through cannot, fields that should drain do not, leaving the communities trapped in between the river and waterlogged fields each year.

[Sadirkhel Sluice Gate at the Border. Photo Author]

What the River needs

The changes unfolding in Katigorah reflect a broader shift in how floods are experienced across the Barak Basin. Floods are no longer only natural events but also partly shaped by human-made interventions. This has weakened the capacity of natural ecosystem services, as evident in the decline in fish diversity, increased sedimentation and loss of productive agricultural fields.

Improving the functioning of sluice gates, removing sediment deposition and steps towards strengthening coordination among authorities is one part of the solution. Beyond that, there is a need to rethink the idea that floods can solely be managed through building more infrastructure.

[Personnel manually opening the sluice gate. Photo Author]

The natural linkages must be preserved and greater efforts are needed to restore hydrological connections between rivers and its associated wetlands. Such an approach would reduce infrastructure costs while promoting sustainable solutions to floods that can support the communities, plants, animals and other livelihoods that share these common riverine spaces.

^[1] This information was collected during interview with personnel from Katigorah Water resource department

Yubaraj Das was a Fellow with the Transboundary Rivers of South Asia (TROSA) Programme. He can be reached at yubarajdas17@gmail.com

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