‘Worshippers of floods’ turn ‘victims of floods’

While the drama of relief and rehabilitation activities such as aerial survey of the flood-ravaged districts by politicians continues, according to the latest figures as per Bihar Government, 12.5 crore people are adversely affected by the flood and the overall flood situation in 16 North Bihar districts remains grim despite reports of major rivers receding. Rivers like Bagmati, Gandak, Kreh, Kosi and Adhwara, flowing above the red mark at certain points, were receding following the spread of water, says a Central Water Commission report.

State Disaster Management Department sources have said 86 people have so far lost their lives and water has caused extensive damage to standing crops, public and private property that was estimated to be around Rs 50 crore.

It has been unanimously felt that the real remedy of the flood lies in adequate arrangement of drainage of flood water. Has the Government done anything with respect to this remedy?.

The strong indictment of the Bihar government by the Congress, demand for irrigation minister Jagdanand Singh removal because of his “criminal neglect” in ensuring sufficient preparations to counter the floods and the left parties public movements to “expose” the government’s lack of sensitivity in providing succour to the flood-hit is meaningless unless it agrees to the Civil society’s demand for creating a mechanism for adequate arrangement for drainage of flood water.

A beginning can be made by setting up of a "Water Drainage Commission" in order to undo the damages of the uncalled for policy initiatives of the past. Also it is about time the suggestion of the Punindra Naraian Singh Committee to merge Revenue Department and Water Resources Department is accepted and the recommendations of progressive Flood Commissions revisited so that the river are given back to the people and the rivers continue to flow.

Such probability can perhaps be made a reality given the apparent political isolation of Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal in the backdrop of the state’s Assembly election also, which is due in less than six months.

Dinesh Kumar Mishra who has been working in the Bihar state, India's most flood-prone region, where he has created an umbrella network, the Barh Mukti Andolan (BMA), of over 700 rural groups of "flood historians" was in Delhi on 20 July at Indian International Centre to make the national capital aware of the ground reality.

A graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Mishra has been a successful engineer. He came to Bihar in 1984 to prepare a report on the devastating floods that rocked Bihar that year.

“Floods that sneaked in like cats earlier, now come roaring like lions,” said Mishra. Even then rising waters used to overwhelm but people were aware of every aspect of the floods and took reasonable precautions. The floods used to come, wash over the land, and leave.

Mishra traced the hidden, alternative history of flood management in Bihar since ancient times. He gave a telling commentary on the failure of governmental efforts to mitigate the hazards of floods in northern Bihar, where 76% of the area continues to be affected by floods and 87% of the population, who depend on agriculture for a living, live a life of unending distress.

Citing anecdotes from Mahabharata, he denounced the lobby, which is promoting river embankments and dams for containing flood hazards. He elaborated on the free water regime of rivers and channel zonation for flood management, the British engineers speaking out openly since mid-19th century against civil engineering structures that obstruct natural drainage (such as embankments) to tame the flood-prone rivers.

‘The Damodar (river) taught a practical lesson to the British that it does not pay to tamper with the rivers loaded with sediments. Therefore they never tried to control floods as long as they stayed in India’.

It was in 1954 that the Indian engineers with political support first embarked upon civil-engineering measures for flood control. As a consequence, natural drainages of rivers were disrupted and the flood fury grew in intensity and areal extent. The flood-affected area in Bihar increased from 2.5 million hectares (m ha) in 1952 to 6.9 m ha in 1994, and 8,00,000 ha of agricultural land became water-logged.

The Kosi river has thus shifted westwards by 160 km over the past 250 years. “The annual sediment load in the Kosi is such that if a bund, one metre high and one metre wide, is built it would circle the equator three times,” said Mishra.

There was a time when the people of Bihar celebrated the monsoons and lived with floods. There was a unique kinship with the rivers. How and when did they become victims of floods, struggling to control the waters? People in the flood prone areas know how to live with the floods. It is the government intervention, which is playing havoc with life and property of the people.

Mindless development practices initiated and carried out in close nexus of politicians and engineers over the years have pushed Bihar into a permanent flood trap. Attempts to control rivers along their course by building embankments have failed. Construction of roads, canals and railways across the Bihar plains has blocked the natural drainage of rivers.

In 1954, Bihar had 160 km of embankments and 25 lakh hectares of flood-prone land. At present after spending over Rs 1,327 crore, the embankments on Bihar’s rivers total 3,430 km. The state’s flood-prone areas have increased to 68.8 lakh hectares.

Since 1952, successive governments have confined rivers and their tributaries in a maze of embankments-expensive, weak structures that often breach, divide communities, and cause permanent water logging in broader catchments. These government projects have tripled the flooded areas of Bihar.

Looking at the river, canal and embankment map of Bihar, West Bengal, Eastern UP, Assam and Orissa, even a layman with some idea of the direction of flow of water can tell the places where such breaches or water logging would occur but the engineers cannot do so as long as they continue to wear the blinkers of crass mercenary motives sans any accountability.

North Bihar alone is drained by eight major rivers-- the Ghagra, Gandak, Buri Gandak, Bagmati, the Adhwara group of rivers, the Kamla, Kosi and the Mahananda. According to recent estimates, 56.5 percent of flood-affected Indians live there. The Government says they have not caused this water logging. The question is if it existed earlier, why did it take canals to those areas? It does not have any answer.

Flood control measures have disturbed the equilibrium between rivers and communities. It’s about time we seek lessons from our past. Flood water stagnates because of the obstructions to the natural flows but money which flows in the name of relief and rehabilitation operations is quite beneficial for politicians and engineers. Therefore they do not want the status quo to change. It is a known fact that dams do not banish floods and flooding.

“State does not exist” in Bihar, this is truer in times of flood than at any other time since there is no state machinery to listen to the ancient wisdom of letting the rivers to have their natural flow.