“When the flood took everything from me, it took more than my home and livelihood, it took away the place I once had in society. People look at us differently now. The relationships and respect we once had are no longer the same. I am not a beggar, and I was never born into a life like this.”
Bijay Pradhan, 36, speaks about a loss that goes beyond a house. Before October 2023, when a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) surged through the Teesta river, his family had a home of their own and relied partly on agriculture and livestock rearing. After the flood, he became a daily-wage labourer supporting his mother, wife and two children. The family now lives in a temporary relief camp in Teesta Bazaar in Kalimpong, West Bengal, alongside hundreds of others. For him, losing the house also meant losing independence and social standing.
The 2023 GLOF was caused by a breach of the South Lhonak Lake in upstream Sikkim, impacting 80,000 people. A 2025 study published in Science estimated that 270 million cubic metres of sediment were swept downstream by the flood. In Kalimpong, the Teesta riverbed reportedly rose between six and 14 metres, a central government committee tasked with documenting the river’s changed morphology found.
Nearly three years after the flood, people are still rebuilding their lives on unstable land, with the possibility of another flood lingering each monsoon. The region experienced consecutive flash floods in 2024 and 2025, exacerbating the landscape’s vulnerabilities. The window for prevention is lost with every year of inaction, experts say.
“The winter dry season is when flood mitigation work must happen. Once the monsoon arrives, working in flood-prone areas becomes almost impossible,” said Praful Rao, founder of ‘Save The Hills’, a Kalimpong-based organisation. The river overflowed during the monsoons of 2024 and 2025 too. “Agencies should be meeting and preparing in the dry months. Instead, attention comes only when the rains arrive and disaster is already at the door.”
The flood that never ended
For many, the 2023 flood did not end when the water receded. In Teesta Bazaar, a small marketplace that runs parallel to the river, people whose homes withstood the GLOF live with a river that has moved closer.
“I don’t care to repair my house because every year the river takes it away,” said Bhawuni Boju, 66. During the 2023 GLOF, the houses in front of hers were washed away, while her own remained standing but filled with sand and water. The same happened during the monsoon floods of 2024 and 2025. The river, which once took several minutes to reach on foot, is now about a minute from her home.
Pradhan Baje, 75, recalls how older residents could anticipate the river’s rising water from the smell of rotten fish and algae, locally called “vale”. “Whenever the river water began to rise, we could smell the rotten fish. That alerted us to the danger,” he recalls.
The river is less predictable now. Decades of erosion, driven by road construction, settlement expansion and agriculture, have rendered the terrain more landslide prone. Floods and droughts have caused the river’s channel width to decrease over time, while damming and barrage construction along its length have also altered its course since the 1970s.
Living in temporary homes
The aftermath of the GLOF’s destruction is still visible in the dwellings of displaced families. In Gafur Busty — a hamlet within Teesta Bazaar — 10 families whose homes were washed away live in a makeshift relief camp inside the unfinished Haat Ghar building. Another 32 families displaced from Melli, a border town, live at Labar Bhotay beside the NH10, on forest land.
At Haat Ghar, plastic sheets, bamboo and tin form shelters without cement walls. Each family has one room that also serves as a kitchen, while washrooms are shared. Most depend on physical labour in the bazaar for income. “We have become like an exhibition. People keep coming here, taking photographs and asking questions, but nothing changes for us. We are still living in the same conditions,” said Bijay Pradhan.
At Labar Bhotay, rain, rats and snakes enter dilapidated homes, and two houses have been damaged by falling branches. Residents were temporarily relocated here two months after the 2023 flood, through an arrangement with the forest department, allowing them to stay until permanent land is allocated.
However, with no permanent allocations in sight, these residents live in the perpetual fear of being evicted. “We cannot build a permanent house because we have no land of our own. We are always afraid that one day we may be asked to leave this forest land. We don’t know how long we can stay here,” said Javed Ali, 25.
Mongabay-India reached out to the Kalimpong district collector, Kuhuk Bhushan, over phone and email to ask about the district’s rehabilitation and disaster management efforts, but did not receive a response at the time of publishing.
When the warning system failed
Residents had lived under the shadow of a large flood for years, but grew fatigued when warnings delivered through police sirens, or rumours heard from friends and family, proved inaccurate. “For the past 10-15 years, we had been hearing rumours and warnings that the dam might breach and a flood could come. It had happened so many times before, but nothing happened, so I took it casually,” said Mehtab Allam, 34, a rafting driver from Melli, referring to the night of the 2023 flood.
Residents said there was no functioning, technical early-warning system to reliably detect and communicate the danger. When the flood came, the police went door to door, sounding sirens, they said.
The danger, however, was not unknown. Less than three weeks before South Llonak lake breached, a team of Swiss experts and state government agencies, led by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), installed two weather stations with cameras at South Lhonak and nearby Shako Cho lakes. The early warning installation was running a year late, and the sensors that would detect a sudden drop in the lake and trigger an alert had not yet been installed.
“Rivers do not follow administrative boundaries,” said Eklavya Sharma, the former director of ICIMOD and chair of the high-level expert committee set up by the West Bengal government on floods and landslides in North Bengal. “A flood that begins in one state can hit communities far downstream in another. States need to share monitoring data and early warnings, not work in isolation. And people in GLOF-prone areas must know what to do when a warning comes, through regular drills and awareness programmes.”
In September, West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari announced the launch of Arjun Vahini, a specialised disaster response squad, in an effort to strengthen the state’s responsiveness. A team of 25 recruits are planned to be deployed in Kalimpong. He also distributed land pattas and cash worth Rs 3 lakhs to 73 families affected by the floods of 2024 and 2025, but whether these benefits extended to those affected by the 2023 GLOF isn’t clear.
Still waiting to be counted
Three years after the flood, the scale of the damage and the process of recovery remain unsettled.
A preliminary assessment by the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) and the Kalimpong district administration in October 2023 estimated around 550 damaged houses in Teesta Bazaar, Tarkhola, Rangpo and Melli. A subsequent assessment by a six-member team of insurance surveyors and loss assessors recorded 104 damaged huts and buildings across Gafur Busty, Nazok Forest Village, Ghel Khola and Deogram, with another 11 houses later added after a local assessment. Under the state’s policies, completely damaged houses receive Rs 75,000 and partially damaged houses Rs 5,000.
Residents disputed the figures, saying some families and properties had been left out. The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, the semi-autonomous body that governs the Darjeeling and Kalimpong hills, took up their complaints and, with the Kalimpong district administration, ordered a fresh survey, which began in July 2025.
In September 2026, Madan Chettri, president of the Teesta Sangrakshan Mancha, a group of flood-affected residents, said the re-survey had been completed and 116 houses were to be built, but that the project was still awaiting sanction from the state finance department. “Nothing has moved till now,” he said.
Repeated surveys became a source of frustration as families recounted losses while their living conditions remained unchanged. “Since the day we were elected as panchayat members, the Teesta GLOF has remained the main issue before us, and even today, it is still unresolved. We have done everything we can from our side, but we do not have the authority or power to take matters beyond a certain point. The decisions lie with the authorities above us,” said Manoj Kumar, a panchayat member.
“Politics plays a significant role in disaster management and mitigation in the Himalayan region. We witnessed this during the 2023 Teesta GLOF, when political differences between the Trinamool-led GTA and the BJP also influenced the disaster governance landscape,” said Rao, referring to disagreements between the two over the deployment of relief funds.
“Another challenge is the high cost of disaster mitigation in the mountains. The same amount of money that could benefit thousands of people in the plains may reach only a few hundred in the hills because of difficult terrain and expensive infrastructure,” Rao added.
The disaster spurred contrasting responses across state lines. In Sikkim, which was the worst affected, recovery moved through formal housing and disaster relief programmes. The state distributed Rs 67.05 lakhs in rental assistance to 447 people affected by the flood, according to the Sikkim government’s official bulletin. It also sanctioned 4,100 houses: 2,100 for affected homeowners under the Sikkim Punarvaas Awaas Yojana and 2,000 for affected tenants under the Sikkim Janta Housing Colony scheme.
West Bengal, on the other hand, never declared the 2023 GLOF flood a disaster. Beyond the one-time compensation, families in Kalimpong received no rental support, and three years on there is still no housing scheme for them. Darjeeling MP Raju Bista blamed the state for not declaring a disaster, while the state government said the Centre had given no relief funds for Kalimpong.
Recovery, in fragments
A week before the flood, Kopila, 56, was preparing her camping business for the tourist season. After years of work, the business had become popular, allowing them to repay their loans and reinvest in equipment and a car to transport tourists. Their camps were fully booked from October 5, 2023, but the flood swept away their campsite, car and equipment before the season could begin. Today, Kopila runs a small canteen in Teesta Bazaar, while the family continues to struggle with the debt left behind.
Across the Teesta, people have coped by borrowing to open small shops or moving between daily-wage work, construction and seasonal rafting. Families who lost homes remain in temporary shelters, while others repair houses knowing the next monsoon could bring the river back.
For displaced families, rebuilding depends on where they can build. “The first priority should be to make communities aware of flood risks through scientific knowledge and common sense, alongside regular community-level disaster drills,” said Sharma, adding, “The government must identify the most vulnerable communities, rehabilitate them and relocate them to safer places before disasters strike. It is also important to address unplanned settlements along riverbanks and regulate migration into high-risk areas to reduce future exposure.”
For Bijay Pradhan, the future remains uncertain, but hope has not disappeared. He wants his children to grow up with the security he once had. Nearly three years after the flood, he is still working as a daily-wage labourer and raising his family in a temporary relief camp. “I have not lost my hope,” he said, “I am still waiting for a permanent solution that will allow my family to rebuild our lives again.”
This article is republished from Mongabay under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.