- Population affected: 29 lakh
- Area under water: 1.09 lakh hectare
- Villages affected: 866
- Severely-hit districts: 5
- Districts partially inundated: 11
- Death toll: Official figure is 18. But this could go into hundreds.
- Impact on agriculture: Districts affected produce a third of Bihar’s agricultural output.
- People evacuated: 6.18 lakh
- Food packets airdropped: 61,192
- Polythene sheets distributed for temporary shelters: 61,344
- Relief camps : 257
- Medical assistance centres: 116
- Cattle/livestock shelters: 63 Army columns deployed: 37 (each column has 100 men)
- Navy personnel: 120
- Boats required: 1224
- Boats in service: 935
- Air Force presence: 4 helicopters
- National Disaster Management Response Force: 635 men
Challenges Ahead
- Tackling diseases and epidemics.
- Providing long-term relief till the waters recede. This could take months
- Helping the marooned rebuild their lives and homes
- Reviving agriculture in this productive region
***
Trail of trouble: Flood victims finding their way to safety in Saharsa
Between August 29 and September 1, in the face of one of modern India’s worst in the scale of calamities, officials got to work. The odds were stacked against them. Besides the immense logistics of relief, the administration was grappling with the damage its own infrastructure had suffered. Officials had lost their houses, hospitals were flooded, and district magistrates were working out of temporary shelters. With railway lines down and roads motorable only for small stretches, officials were forced to use boats.
At the National Disaster Management Authority’s office in Delhi, the first reports of the breach in the Kusaha barrage in Nepal, which started the deluge, came in on August 19. K.M. Singh, a former director-general of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and member of the NDMA, was surfing the Internet when he read reports of the breach. As alerts flew, the NDMA deployed its disaster response force. Though set up after the experience of the tsunami, it is still understaffed. So when the flood waters hit Bihar, it had limited resources. Six lakh people had to be evacuated in 48-72 hours and the NDMA could rustle up only 23 motorised boats that were dispatched from Calcutta and Bhubaneshwar. The army then dispatched several columns, each comprising 100 men and 10 to 12 boats.
It was only after the first few evacuations that the real extent of the tragedy became apparent. The affected districts had never experienced such immense flooding. So people just hung in. The advice from the elders, which tends to be crucial in the absence of more definitive information from the authorities, was that no one should panic and run. They were certain the water level would soon recede and stabilise at about ankle-depth. This sense of complacency left many villages marooned.
Arjun Musahar, a resident of Sukhasan basti, Madanpur block, Madhepura district, was one of the many who refused to pay heed. Within hours he and his family of eight children were trapped. Trapped for a week atop a building, the family finally managed to find place on a boat—only to be left to fend for themselves on the road to Saharsa. Walking for days with his wife, young children and infants in tow, Arjun spent the nights on the road looking for food packets and directions to a relief camp.
As refugees streamed into Patna, they faced a grey future. Naveen Jadhav, biding time on the main platform of Patna station, had left his house in Ghardhellai in Murliganj when a boat arrived to pick up his family. He was lucky as he had some rations left. Managing on a meal a day, he gave the bulk of the food and fresh water to his five children. He was rescued after 11 days spent atop a roof in the unrelenting heat. Dependent now on handouts from camps run by political parties, he is still coming to terms with the fact that he won’t be able to return home for months. This one fact is the difference between Bihar’s earlier floods and this one.
Gruelling: Women and children at a relief camp in Madhepura
Officials are preparing for a massive health crisis and the state government has sent out desperate pleas for vaccines. Medicines to treat diarrhoea and dysentery have been stocked. The administration is also bracing for outbreaks of cholera and jaundice. It has rushed 250 doctors to the affected areas and is looking to mobilise another 500. Health secretary Deepak Kumar in camping in Madhepura to oversee medical relief.
With the Kosi having changed its course, the bulk of its flow now streaming straight south, officials say the flood will not recede in the usual 15-20 days. It may stay for months, at least till the breach in Nepal is repaired. Any rainfall in the catchment area will raise the water levels. "Any receding is a temporary phenomenon and we cannot be lulled into complacency," said R.K. Singh, Bihar’s principal secretary, disaster management.
There are other unusual problems. The water has driven snakes to dry ground, where they share space with humans. The administration is now gearing up for a demand for anti-venom. Also, rescuers took nearly 48 hours to orient themselves: landmarks were all submerged and they had to use handheld GPS devices to find their way to the marooned. They would often be misled by locals. "Most people would take us to the places where their families were trapped. This was undesirable, because we wanted to get the maximum people out," an officer on a rescue team told Outlook. In a bid to quickly process loans and compensation, the RBI issued guidelines to ensure that banks support victims by giving soft loans and help them open accounts to deposit relief cheques.
While rescue teams battled the fury of the Kosi, politicians were making a mad dash to the affected areas for electoral gains. Railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, who was quick to start several trains for transporting critical relief material and bring flood victims to camps, couldn’t resist taking potshots at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. While his trains brought in relief, Laloo turned his visit into a mini-election rally, picking up infants and distributing 500-rupee notes as cameras clicked.
The floods could set Bihar back by decades. As Parasuram Ray, director of the Centre for Environment & Food Security, New Delhi, points out, the Kosi carries sand that can turn a prosperous farmer into a pauper overnight. "The Kosi deposits so much sand that it will destroy the fertility of the region. This area produces nearly one-third of Bihar’s agricultural output. The kharif crop is destroyed and the rabi is unlikely this year. With over 1 lakh hectares under water, the disaster is a catastrophe for the region’s food security," he says.
So will Bihar survive this latest blow? Chances of course are that it will. But when man-made disasters—like the Kosi calamity—strike, they invariably leave a trail of destruction that the land and its people have to suffer for years to come.
