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Kosi Floods: Establishment Refuses To Learn Any Lesson Dinesh
Kumar Mishra Dr. Jagannath Mishra, former Chief Minister of Bihar,
has given a pathetic description of floods in Bihar. He said that
"Nobody from the government has gone to Saharsa so far. If the people in
Saharsa are surviving, they must be saying that we are engulfed in water
since ten days and nobody is there to think about us. This is quite
worrisome. I will suggest that we must try to look after those surviving
there. We must try to save them, whether by boats or a helicopter
.. The
flood in Saharsa is not a flood, this is unprecedented
.we cannot call
it a flood, it is a deluge." But wait, he is not talking about the
recent floods (2008) in Bihar. He was making a speech in the Bihar
Vidhan Sabha on the 13th September 1984 about a similar incident that
took place on the 5th September 1984 near Navhatta in Saharsa district
of north Bihar when the Kosi had breached its embankment at 75th
kilometer south of the much talked about Bhimnagar Barrage and come out
of the jacket just as it happened at Kusaha this year. Obviously, the
powers that be refuse to take any lessons from the past mistakes and
their executive wing, the Water Resources Department, is immune to any
criticism and learning. The 1984 incident had uprooted nearly half a
million people from their homes and hearths and engulfed 96 villages
spread over 7 blocks of Saharsa and Supaul districts then. They could
return to their homes only after the Holi festival in March 1985. The
Kosi embankment (locally called as the eastern afflux bundh was breached
near the Kusaha village in Nepal turning four Panchayats of Nepal into a
watery grave. These Panchayats are Western Kusaha, Sripur, Haripur and
Laukahi with a population of nearly 35,000. Counting continues about the
number of villages trapped in floodwaters in Bihar. Supaul, Saharsa,
Araria, Purnea, Katihar, and Khagaria had to bear the brunt of the
unexpected floods. According to official sources nearly 35 lakh people
have been hit by the floods in these districts. Nearly 3 lakh people
have been evacuated from the engulfed areas. Relief operations are
reported to be picking up for the survivors and so are the rescue
operations. Unless marooned people are accessed, relief operations carry
little meaning. The relief that is reaching the people is not adequate
as they were braving the floods for about a fortnight without any
external assistance. The blame game and mud slinging that is so
common to such accidents are also going on in full swing. Many leaders
of opposition have blamed the Govt. of Bihar for the breach while the
GoB and its ministers are calling the breach a natural calamity and that
the river is now trying to go to the east. It must be mentioned here
that that the Kosi embankments have breached thrice on its western side
and each time it was suggested that the river is trying to the west. The
Kosi embankments were built in late 1950s and according to the agreement
with Nepal, the responsibility of maintaining these embankments was
vested in GoB. Let us glance through the earlier breaches in the Kosi
embankment. The inaugural breach had to be faced on the western
embankment in Nepal in 1963 near the village Dalwa. Binodanand Jha of
the Congress Party was the chief minister and the responsibility of the
breach was passed on to rats and foxes that dig holes in the body of the
embankments through which water seeps and the embankment fails. The
other reason for the failure was given that because of the bad road
conditions, the boulders could not be reached to the site. In this
connection, a meeting of the Irrigation Minister of Bihar, Dip Narayan
Singh, the Panchayat Minister of Nepal, Kharag Bahadur Singh and the
Irrigation Minister of Nepal, Dr. Nageshwar Prasad Singh was held at the
Kosi Project headquarters at Birpur on August 22, 1963. The Nepalese
side offered to extend all cooperation in undertaking any long term
programme to tame the Kosi. They also indicated that should a need arise
for rehabilitation of the people in a similar situation, then its
responsibility should be taken by the Government of India. Then came the
breach of 1968 at five places in Jamalpur (Darbhanga). This was caused
due to the highest flow of 913,000 cusecs ever recorded in the river but
an enquiry held by the Chief Engineer Floods of CWC, P N Kumra
revealed that the failure was once again caused by the rats and foxes.
The state was under the President's Rule then. The residents of
eight villages in the Basantpur block of Supaul district had refused to
be relocated outside the Kosi embankment and demanded instead a ring
bundh for them and the eastern Kosi embankment formed a part of this
ring. The Bhatania Approach Bundh that was constructed in 1968-69,
collapsed between 10th to 19th kilometer below Bhimnagar in 1971 and
many villages were washed away but eastern embankment had not breached.
The Approach Bundh was constructed at a cost of Rs. 3.17 lakhs but the
repair cost of the same was to the tune of Rs. 2.87cr.The state was
under the Chief Minister ship of Bhola Paswan Shastri of Sanyukt
Vidhayak Dal. Since the damage was done only to eight villages, the
incident did not get wide publicity. The next incident occurred in
1980 near Bahuarawa on the eastern embankment in Salkhua block of
Saharsa district near 121st kilometer below Bhimnagar. The river eroded
the embankment in about 2 kilometers reach but just after eroding, it
receded very fast and did not spill on to the countryside. The state was
ruled by Dr Jagannath Mishra of Congress Party then. In 1984, a tragedy
as bad as Jamalpur struck the eastern embankment near Hempur village in
the Navhatta block of Saharsa district, 75 kilometer below the Bhimnagar
barrage. It had uprooted half a million people and had engulfed 96
villages in 7 blocks of Saharsa and Supaul districts. People could go
back to their villages only after the Holi festival of 1985 when the
breach got plugged. The breach was repaired at a cost of Rs. 8.2cr.
Bindeshwari Dubey of Congress Party was the Chief Minister. In 1991,
there was a breach in the western embankment near Joginia in Nepal that
led to a political crisis in Bihar and the Water Resources Minister of
the state had to resign his post. This resignation was never accepted by
Lalu Prasad Yadav who was the Chief Minister of the state then. This was
a repeat performance of Bahuarawa breach where the river had receded
after eroding the embankment. The repair of the embankment costed Rs
5.17cr and a compensation of Rs. 19.80 lakh had to be paid to Nepal for
temporary acquisition of the land and trees etc. And the Kusaha
breach took place in the regime of Nitish Kumar and it will take about a
year to get the complete story. Thus, virtually no party including the
President's Rule can claim that it was not involved in such an accident.
Yet, the blame game and mud slinging continues unabated. There is no
history of these breaches being plugged before March next year. The
practicality of embanking of a heavily silt carrying river is that the
embankments would breach at regular intervals as we have seen so far
that the river has breached its embankment 8 times in a span of just 50
years. The government will keep on raising and strengthening these
embankments and they would retaliate in a more ferocious way. This will
happen irrespective of which party is ruling the state and also in full
presence of administration, officials of the water resources department
and the police. An interesting argument is given by the engineers and
politicians after blaming Nepal and Nepali people of non-cooperation
that the river has changed its course and it now wants to move to east.
If that is true, why on earth the embankments were constructed along the
river? Were they not meant to prevent the river from moving either east
or west? How did the Water Resources Department know that the river
wanted to change its course? Why did it help the river accomplishing its
objectives? All this can happen in our country because there is no
accountability at any level. Remember the World Commissioned of Dams
Report (2000) which was rubbished by Government of India and it laid too
much of emphasis on accountability as one of its primary tools. All
this bickering notwithstanding, the people of Bihar need help from
outside. Be it Governmental or otherwise. For those who have lost
everything that they possessed, the life will have to start from
scratch. We used to suggest earlier that people should get compensation
instead of relief but will say this year that they should not only get
compensation but relief also. This could be any kind to rehabilitate
them back in their life. The worst is yet to come when the water would
recede and the people will get to know how much of their land is sand
cast, how much has gone under waterlogging. That is the time they will
come to know that the Kharif is already lost and the chances of Rabi
also may not be there as moisture of the land will not allow for
ploughing operations and without ploughing no agriculture will be
possible. The order is going to be tall. Kosi floods this year have been
disastrous and no explanation whatsoever would satisfy the hapless
victim of the tragedy that will be remembered for a long time to
come. One is reminded of a statement of Karpoori Thakur, a former
Chief Minister of Bihar, in Bihar Vidhan Sabha during the zero hour, "I
am pained to say that after reminding the officers time and again, this
small repair work of the embankment was not done. The result is that the
embankment has breached between 75 to 78 km and almost all of Saharsa
district is under a sheet of water. The situation is horrifying there
and the district administration or the engineers of the Irrigation
Department have not done what they should have done in the situation.
Rome was burning and Nero was playing his flute and this is what this
Government is doing." This again was a statement on the 10th September
1984. Has anything changed ever since? Convenor-Barh Mukti
Abhiyan 6-B Rajiv Nagar, Patna 800024 E-mail:
dkmishra108@gmail.com Mob:
+919431303360 __._,_.___
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