Since the 1950 earthquake in Assam and Tibet, the island of Majuli on the Brahmaputra River in Assam has been facing soil erosion at an alarming rate. Thousands of islanders have lost their homes as well as agricultural lands, and many of them have become migrants in their own land. There have been no compensations from the National Disaster Response Fund or the State Disaster Response Fund as the guidelines of the NDRF and SDRF do not consider riverbank erosion as a natural disaster. This article argues for a more rational classification of hazards based on their causation factors.
