Sept. 10: The columns of dark clouds that invariably envelop the skies above vast swathes of land in the Barak Valley in mid-May are seen as a bad omen by villagers of the three districts of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi.

Residents of these districts immediately brace for floods, an annual ritual of nature that plunges them into a sea of misery.

This year, too, has been no different with thousands of villagers caught in the swirl of monsoon flooding between June and September.

Three waves of floods uprooted scores of villagers from their homes, forcing them to spend days without adequate relief from the district administrations.

The annual average rainfall of around three metres inundated the highways and PWD roads cutting off nearly five lakh marooned from the rest of the country. The Barak again inundated low-lying areas in Silchar last week, forcing nearly 7,000 villagers to take shelter in 14 school buildings. The river remains above the danger level of 19.83 metres.

The only sign of hope in the gloom is a Rs 1,427-crore scheme drawn up by Delhi and the state government to save 86,700 hectares of land in the three Barak Valley districts from floodwaters.

Senior engineers of the state water resources department said the scheme, a part of the Rashtriya Barh Aayog, would be implemented in phases and benefit 6,30,000 villagers.

It envisages strengthening the existing embankments, construction of more dykes, use of new anti-erosion devices and construction of reservoirs.

The Barak, which is the second largest river in the Northeast, wreaks havoc every monsoon as it tends to flow down the catchment basin.

The annual floods in the Barak Valley occur mainly because of high precipitation — at an average of 85 per cent — during the five monsoon months. The overall length of the Barak river in the valley districts is 129 km.

The Barak originates from the Saramati hills in Nagaland and flows through Manipur and the alluvial plains of the Barak Valley before entering neighbouring Bangladesh.