Flooding urbanity: narratives from Safai Karamcharis of Guwahati, Assam

Post the devastating floods of Assam in 2022, a team of ethnographers took to the streets of the capital city Guwahati to explore the turbulent hydro-social dynamics. This paper is a documentation of the hidden narrative of sanitation workers in the slums of Guwahati; a community doomed to cater to the needs of the urban collective over their own. It delves into the nuances of caste and gender dimensions that govern the fragile livelihoods of the community most vulnerable to floods in the region—safai karamcharis. The study explores the undertones of informality in a formal work set-up and the cyclical nature of the annual disaster. The observations and analysis from this project add to (Coulthard et al. in Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation: Trade-offs and Governance, Routledge, 2018) Multidimensionality of Poverty by expanding the definition of ecosystem services and its implications at the community level.