At least 75 dead, 7 lakh displaced: The making of Assam’s annual ‘unprecedented’ flood

Newslaundry · Jul 30, 2026

When it comes to floods in Assam, I refrain from using the term unprecedented. In media reporting on disasters, sensationalism often becomes the norm. The task is to generate curiosity. This is, of course, a structural limitation of event-based reporting. Assam’s floods, however, need a deeper contextual understanding.Unprecedented compared to what?If I kept using the term unprecedented for every major flood in Assam, I would be using it quite often. Unprecedented floods arrive every few years. In the last few decades, unprecedented has become remarkably common. Intensified flooding is the…