Teturam Mili (40), once a self-sufficient farmer, is no longer able to cultivate his small agricultural plot at Dhiri Mising Gaon in Dhemaji district on the northern part of Assam. He is now a manual labour after his farmland was buried under thick layers of sand during last year's flood.

Teturam, along with five other families, have been living at makeshift shelters set up on an elevated ground near the railway track after their houses and land were damaged in the deluge.

"I manage to earn Rs 150 a day whenever I have work. There is no end to our misery. We have lost everything in the flood. The land we have is no longer suitable for cultivation. The plot is buried under sand. We have been reduced to beggars," Teturam rued.

Another Bakhtiar Khan (32) of Chenimari village in Barpeta district in western Assam lost about 40 bigha land. The land, which was once owned by his extended family, was lost in Brahmaputra river bank erosion. Bakhtiar, now works as a mason helper in Guwahati as farming is no longer a viable livelihood option for him.

"We were one of the well-to-do farming families of our village. Those good days are over. We have lost a major part of our land in erosion. I had to move to Guwahati to earn a living. Due to the high cost of living here, I manage to save only about Rs 2,500 from my monthly income, which I send back to my family," Bakhtiar said.

Teturam and Bakhtiar are among the burgeoning number of floods and erosion-displaced persons in the state. Though Assam's 40 per cent land is flood-prone, experts have opined that climate change has further aggravated the problem. Experts have warned that glacier melting in the Tibet region, where the Brahmaputra originates, is likely to worsen the scenario in the state. An estimated 1.5 lakh people have been displaced after they lost their land and properties in floods and erosion in the last decade. About 8,000 hectares of land is lost annually due to the same reason. The state has lost an area of about 4.27 lakh hectares since 1950 in erosion, amounting to 7.40 percent of the state's total land mass. Last year, Assam experienced the worst floods in two decades, which claimed 124 lives, damaging infrastructure, croplands and affecting over 23 lakh people.

As floods and erosion take on the form of environmental hazards, livelihood and food security of the agriculture-dependent state have become serious issues.

"Climate change has made the hazards like floods and erosion more erratic. We need to take a fresh look on the traditional practices in the fields of agriculture and food preservation and while dealing with flood. There are many traditional practices which are sustainable. We need to study and document those practices to deal with climate change," said Partha J Das, environment researcher at Aaranyak, a biodiversity conservation NGO.