Q.In which of the following rivers is the Majuli River Island situated?

Think of a flood as water claiming land it doesn’t normally own. Some land gets visited by this water often — every few years, sometimes every rainy season. Other land stays dry for decades. The places that keep getting flooded, or are highly likely to flood, are what we call flood prone regions.

The everyday intuition is simple: if you live near a river that swells every monsoon, or in a low-lying area where rainwater collects, you already know your region is flood prone. It’s not about a single bad flood — it’s about a pattern. A region becomes “prone” when the physical geography and climate make flooding a recurring possibility, not a rare accident.

Now the precise meaning. A flood prone region is an area where the probability of flooding is significantly higher than the surrounding land, due to factors like proximity to rivers, low elevation, poor drainage, or heavy rainfall. It’s a classification used in planning, disaster management, and land use. When governments map flood prone zones, they’re identifying where water is likely to go when it rains heavily or when rivers overflow — so that people can prepare, build accordingly, or avoid settling there altogether.

Why does this matter for a humanities student? Because floods are not just natural events — they’re social and economic events. A flood prone region is where livelihoods get disrupted, crops fail, homes are damaged, and public money gets spent on relief and rebuilding. When you study economics, you’ll see how floods affect food prices and insurance. When you study political science, you’ll see how governments decide who gets compensation and who gets evacuated first. When you study geography, you’ll see how human settlements have historically ignored flood risk in favour of fertile river soil. …