Monsoons Leave 1.5m Stranded in India and Bangladesh

Up to 1.5 million people have been marooned or made homeless by the annual flooding of the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers in north-east India and Bangladesh.

A million people in Bangladesh were cut off by rising floodwaters, while 500,000 were made homeless in India's north-east states. In the state of Assam alone, 800 villages have been inundated since monsoon rains began earlier this month. In India, 12 people were reported dead, while five deaths were recorded in Bangladesh.

The water breached flood defences in Assam and inundated 11 districts of the state, which covers 40,000 hectares, leaving residents to flee to makeshift tarpaulin shelters on higher ground and embankments.

"The flood situation is very critical and I saw with my own eyes some villages late Wednesday being swamped by the gushing floodwaters and forcing villagers to take shelter on rooftops and even on country boats," Bhumidhar Barman, Assam's revenue, relief and rehabilitation minister, told the Indo-Asian news service.

Roads and railways have also been overwhelmed by the floodwaters, cutting off the whole of north-eastern India from the rest of the country and severely hampering the relief operation. Indian railways spokesman, T Rabha, said that more than 2,000 people were involved in clearing and restoring the tracks.

Reuters reported that a 12-year-old boy had drowned in the floodwaters, and a woman had died when a wooden rescue boat capsized in southern Assam yesterday.

The monsoon season in India does not end until October, and the weather in the flooded areas is expected to worsen before it improves.

Devastating floods in the region have been an annual occurrence for at least 50 years as the Brahmaputra, one of the most heavy-flowing rivers in the world, struggles through a narrow stretch of land during monsoons that in places can drop more than 40cm of rain in a day - equivalent to nearly a year of rainfall in eastern England.

The flooding in 2003 cut off the whole of north-eastern India and forced 20 million people from their homes, while more than 1,000 people were killed and 12 million made homeless in the following year's monsoon.

Following that devastation, Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, promised to look at ways of alleviating the problem, but little progress has yet been made.