PhD defence M. (Mausumi) Chetia

Brief summary of the doctoral thesis:

The yearning to belong and the wish to feel at home are basic human emotions. Yet, geopolitical realities and changing laws impact these emotions materially. Political processes such as disasters and related displacements can transform what follows, including the nature of belonging and a sense of security for those affected. Communities living close to the Brahmaputra River in Assam (India) have been affected by recurring riverbank erosion and floods for many generations. Their effects include internal displacements and the many complexities surrounding erosion-related rehabilitation

While there is policy recognition of the problem of riverbank erosion (RBE) in Assam in the Northeast of India, there is ambiguity in the political recognition and an inadequate policy implementation regarding the long-term rehabilitation of the communities displaced by erosion. Erosion-related displacements, therefore, continue to be a major issue in Assam. Unlike flood-affected communities in Assam, permanently erosion-displaced families have no homes to return to when the floods recede, and the temporary shelters are closed. Erosion-related displacements, then, can become defining moments in people’s lives wherein their home is lost – not only as a physical entity but also as an emotional space. Thus, the central query of my thesis is: given the recurrent nature of riverbank erosion and floods and the policy-political ambiguity of erosion-governance, what does home mean for disaster-displaced communities and how does this shape their human (in)security?

I take a historical-structural approach to disaster-related displacements, contextualising their aftereffects within the simultaneity of the long-term crises in the region and their governance. I investigate the lived psychosocial and political (in)securities that accompany experiential communities, within the contextual-analytical background of Assam as part of a borderland region and use a three-pronged approach to home: as imaginative and material, as the nexus of collective power and identity, and as an entity governed at a multiscalar level. What is of critical interest to me here are the roles that power, community identity, agency, and collective actions play in diverse home-making processes. Such an approach centre-stages a political-emotional conceptualization of home.