Going With the Flow

When the waters rise in Bihar, individuals do what they have always done: wait for them to recede.

Key points

• Behind these two experiments is the Arrah-based Center of Resilience which Kumar founded in 2020.
• Kumar, an engineer-turned-upcycling artist, began wondering if waiting it out was the only option for the victims.
• Kumar's epiphany was unusual: what if a house could simply rise with the water?
• A mechanical engineering graduate from Pune, he had moved into art and waste-based design.

When the waters rise in Bihar, individuals do what they have always done: wait for them to recede. In the floods of 2019-20, Prashant Kumar, just an ordinary resident, watched the familiar cycle unfold in Patna-water came in, relief followed, and once the floodwaters withdrew, life returned to normal. Until the next flood.

Kumar, an engineer-turned-upcycling artist, began wondering if waiting it out was the only option for the victims. "I started thinking about how we can create and adapt to nature, because flooding is one of the effects of climate change and it is increasing every year, " he notes. "So, for me, it was important to try to do something for the community." Flooding is an almost annual occurrence in India, affecting millions of hectares and, by the government's long-term estimates, killing around 1, 650 individuals a year. Bihar is considerably more exposed; regarding 73% of the geographical area are flood-prone-28 of its 38 districts are officially classified as flood-prone.

Kumar's epiphany was unusual: what if a house could simply rise with the water? In 2023, he built what he describes as India's first climate-resilient floating house in Buxar. The `6-lakh prototype combined bamboo, mud and traditional roofing with a steel frame. Waste matter and discarded drums offered it buoyancy; plastic was compressed into sheets for flooring and walls. Meanwhile, the technology, Kumar insists, is kept deliberately simple. "My work has always been sensitive towards nature and uses the sort of material which is sustainable and something which the community already knows how to use, " he notes. "It is not hi-fi at all. By keeping it simple, individuals can adapt to and adopt my low-tech solution."

Kumar had returned to Bihar in 2020 after four years motorcycling from India to all the way to London, Scotland and back to work on grassroots and environmental projects, often voluntarily. A mechanical engineering graduate from Pune, he had moved into art and waste-based design. Back home, the floods offered him that sinking feeling.

For context, the prototype he came up with became more than just an experiment. By 2025, Kumar had built the Mothership, a larger floating community centre for sustainability training, climate-centred events and community activities. A smaller floating unit was fitted with a gravity-based water filtration system, which, he notes, could clean 3, 000-4, 000 litres a day. Then the major test and the floods provided him the opportunity to prove the efficacy of Kumar's vision. Individuals employed the floating buildings to store grain and their belongings. Families from a number of affected houses moved into the floating space, living on water for almost a month and a half. What had began as a water station became their refuge.

In practice, the flood-casualty that was hardest to ignore was healthcare. The rising water had driven poisonous snakes into the open and left pregnant women in urgent need of medical care. His next project is to create a floating clinic which can reach stranded communities, rather than the other way around. "Instead of thinking that there is no road, how people will reach the village, and from where the required resources would come from, we just bring water clinics staffed with locals to the right communities and it can serve them during the flooding time, " he notes.

Behind these two experiments is the Arrah-based Center of Resilience which Kumar founded in 2020. Getting funds is a challenge; he takes up freelance art work elsewhere in India to backing the projects in Bihar. Kumar's larger ambition is to create a climate-resilient village that can float during the floods, stay naturally cool to brave heatwaves in summer; and grow its own food and generate energy differently. "My vision is to create the first climate-resilient village in the world, " he notes. "Imagine a whole village starts floating when a flood arrives."

For now, that village exists in his mind as fragments of a revolutionary idea: a floating house, a community centre, a water station and a clinic still on the drawing board. But all the ideas emerged from the same simple question Kumar began asking himself after the floods: instead of waiting for the water to go away, what if individuals could build a life that moves with it? An idea floated can additionally land.

Taken together, the developments around going With the Flow point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.