In Alekhargul, a village barely five kilometres from Badarpur town in Assam’s Sribhumi district, the monsoon arrived every year with the same uncertainty.
The rivers that fed the region’s paddy fields would swell past their banks. Within days, fields that families depended on for rice would disappear under murky brown water for months.
Homes were swept away. Livestock drowned. Farmers watched their only source of income disappear, year after year, with seemingly no way to stop it — or make use of it.
Nazrul Haque grew up in the middle of this cycle.
“My father farmed the same land that drowned every year, and the arithmetic of it never worked. Ordinary paddy farming was the only occupation most families in the area knew, and it consistently failed to yield enough to live on. There was no fallback trade, no second income to lean on when the water came. We were farming to survive one season, and then losing everything to the next,” he recalls.
His father had tried, in his own way, to work with the water rather than fight it. Long before Nazrul took up fish farming, his father borrowed Rs 10,000 to start a small fish venture. He used the money carefully and repaid the bank on schedule.
The venture never grew into much. But it planted an idea in the family — and gave them a repayment record the bank would remember.
Choosing water over a government job
In 2000, fresh out of graduation, Nazrul turned down what was then considered a safe career option for a young man in rural Assam: a government job.
Instead, he chose fish farming.
A community gathers around a fishing net as abundant fish emerge, symbolizing Alekhargul’s remarkable transition from crop farming to aquaculture.
His reasoning was simple. If his land was going to remain underwater for months anyway, why not make that water earn something rather than simply endure it?
Sribhumi already had a ready market for fish nearby. That, more than any grand plan, helped decide the direction he took.
“I began small, on a modest plot, with modest results. My first attempts produced barely five to seven quintals of fish from a single hectare. It was not much, but it proved the idea could work. That was enough for me to keep going,” he says.
Nazrul continued reinvesting in his farm. In 2003, he approached the State Bank of India’s Badarpur branch and secured a loan under a state government scheme called ARIASP. The capital allowed him to expand beyond a single plot and adopt more scientific methods of fish rearing.
Farming the water, not just fishing it
To understand why Nazrul’s results began to differ from those of his neighbours, it helps to look at how fish were traditionally obtained in flood-prone parts of Assam.
For generations, the common approach in submerged areas like Sribhumi was to capture rather than farm fish. During the monsoon, wild fish would enter flooded fields on their own. Villagers would then net or trap them as the water began to recede, typically between June and December.
The overflowing waters of Assam’s monsoon season become productive ponds as farmers harvest fish instead of watching crops disappear.
The practice was seasonal and unpredictable, and the yields were low — only a few kilograms per hectare each year.
Nazrul took a different approach.
Instead of waiting for the floods to bring fish, he deliberately stocked his ponds with selected species. He fed and monitored them through the year and used systems to keep the water productive.
These included recirculating aquaculture systems to manage water quality, aerators to maintain oxygen levels in crowded ponds, and targeted medicines to address fish diseases before they could wipe out a season’s stock.
He also avoided chemical feed, relying instead on organic methods.
The result is six to seven tonnes of fish across roughly 100 hectares. That works out to around 60 to 70 kg of fish per hectare each year — more than 10 times the few kilograms per hectare associated with passive flood-season fishing described above.
Nazrul was not simply fishing in the flood. He was farming it.
From quintals to tonnes
Two decades of reinvestment turned that first modest plot into a much larger operation.
Today, Nazrul farms roughly 100 hectares, combining land he owns with land he leases from others in the area.
What once brought destruction now brings income, as farmers use prolonged floodwaters to rear fish and support their families. Photograph: (Awaz The Voice)
His ponds hold a variety of species, including rohu, catla, singhi, magur, common carp, pabda, koi and rupchanda, along with turtles reared for the market.
His produce now travels beyond Sribhumi to markets across Assam and neighbouring states such as Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
That reach would have seemed unimaginable when he was producing seven quintals of fish from a single hectare.
“There is a lot of potential for fish farming in Assam. A lot of people just don’t know how to do it. But if they are taught, they will benefit from it and so will our rivers,” he says.
He points to a state that imports much of the fish it consumes even as large tracts of land remain submerged and unused for months each year.
‘Everything I finish sowing, the river floods’
Not everyone in Alekhargul needed convincing about the need for an alternative livelihood.
Sriratan, 58, a crop farmer and the sole breadwinner for his wife and two daughters, had been living the reality Nazrul described.
“I have had no crops to sell for the last four years because of annual floods. Everything I finish sowing or am preparing to harvest, the river floods and all my crops are destroyed. Even tilling the soil becomes impossible because the field becomes inundated and muddy. That affects soil quality too,” he says.
“I had taken loan after loan, but most of it went towards purchasing raw materials for farming and paying for my daughters’ school and college fees.”
By the time he heard about fish farming through friends Nazrul had spoken to, Sriratan says he had reached a point of deep distress. He had even thought about ending his life, hoping that government compensation would at least reach his family.
When his friends brought Nazrul’s message to him, he began considering another option.
Teaching a village to stop dreading the rain
Success on his own farm was only the beginning for Nazrul.
He began helping other villagers make the same shift — from seeing their flooded plots as ruined farmland to using the water for fish farming.
A community gathers around a fishing net as abundant fish emerge, symbolizing Alekhargul’s remarkable transition from crop farming to aquaculture.
His approach was hands-on.
He ran demonstrations on his own farm so people could see the process before trying it themselves. He then visited individual plots and helped families work out how to set up ponds according to their land and circumstances.
For those who wanted to start but lacked money, Nazrul helped them access loans instead of leaving them to navigate the process alone.
He also gave many families their first batch of fingerlings, allowing them to begin fish farming without having to find money for stocking their ponds.
Sriratan was among those Nazrul worked with directly.
Over several sessions, Nazrul explained how fish cultivation works in floodwater, which species are better suited to those conditions, and the basics of harvesting, catching and selling fish.
He also took Sriratan to see his farm and vouched for him at the bank when he applied for a loan.
The idea was not immediately accepted across the village.
For years, many people in Alekhargul did not see fish farming as a serious livelihood. That began to change as neighbours watched the results accumulate.
“Once people saw the money coming in, they didn’t need convincing anymore,” Nazrul says.
The shift also attracted educated young people who might otherwise have left the village for salaried jobs, along with farmers looking for alternatives to crops that repeatedly failed in the floods.
Today, every family in Alekhargul is connected to fish farming or trading in some form, involving more than 300 households.
The State Bank of India’s Badarpur branch — the same branch that had backed Nazrul’s loan and expansion years earlier — later formally named Alekhargul an ‘SBI Fishery Village’, recognising the transformation that had grown from one man’s experiment into a major source of livelihood for the community.
A model with room to grow
Alekhargul’s transformation is particularly significant in the context of the district it sits in.
Sribhumi spans nearly 1,800 square kilometres and has well over a thousand revenue villages. It is home to more than a million people, the vast majority of whom eat fish regularly, creating strong local demand.
For generations, floods meant ruined fields and mounting debts; today, the same waters provide fish, income, and renewed hope.
Assam’s fisheries sector has also been growing, with statewide production touching roughly 4.43 lakh tonnes in 2022-23.
The state government has since launched a scheme aimed at building ponds on individual farms and in villages across Assam — a policy push that follows a similar approach to the one Nazrul has been using in Alekhargul for two decades.
For a village where monsoon floods once meant months of lost crops and income, fish farming has offered another way to use the water.
‘I have earned nearly a lakh in three months’
For Sriratan, that change is already tangible.
“At 58, I have completely shifted careers from being a crop farmer to a fish cultivator. In 2025, when my land flooded, I began to cultivate fish using the water,” he says.
“Of course, when the tide is high, nothing can be done. But the inundated water is useful and lasts a long time to rear fish. I have earned nearly a lakh in three months, which was something I only imagined earlier.”
What the floods left behind
Nazrul’s work has also earned recognition beyond Sribhumi.
He has been recognised at the district level as a progressive fishery businessman. He also received the Best Indian Fish Farmer Award from the National Fisheries Development Board under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The award was presented by the then Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying at an event in Ahmedabad marking World Fisheries Day.
Fish farming has given flood-affected farmers an alternative livelihood, allowing them to make productive use of land submerged every monsoon.
More recently, he was conferred the Assam Gaurav Award, the state’s third-highest civilian honour. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma highlighted his contribution to aquaculture and employment generation in the Barak Valley.
For a man who once measured his harvest in quintals from a single hectare, it has been a long journey.
But Nazrul is not stopping there.
“I plan to expand my fishery business further and to set up a fish seed production unit, which would let me supply young fish stock to farmers across the region rather than depending on outside sources,” he says.
He remains vocal about the potential he sees across Assam, where large tracts of land in Upper and Lower Assam stay submerged and unused for much of the year. He believes land that is unfit for cultivation could instead be used for fish farming.
“We don’t need to keep importing fish from outside the state. The water is already here. We just have to use it,” he says.
The floods still come to Alekhargul every monsoon.
But for many families, the water no longer means only loss. It has become a source of livelihood — one fish pond, one family and one season at a time.
