Engineered chaos

Engineered chaos

september 5, 1984. Ganga Prasad Yadav, a farmer living in Teghara village in Saharsa district in north Bihar, will not forget the date in a hurry. "It had been raining incessantly for over a week. The water level of the Kosi river had been rising continuously. Then the eastern Kosi embankment breached near Hempur village," he recalls. In one sweep, the surging flood waters submerged nearly a dozen villages. In a few hours, the river had completely obliterated his village. "I was saved by my father who carried me on his shoulders, wading through the gushing water to the higher reaches," he says. They were the lucky ones. Nearly 200 fellow villagers drowned in the floods.

The Kosi means kosna or curse in Hindi. And true to its meaning, it devastates anything that comes in its way, from the Himalayan range in Nepal --where it originates -- to the fertile plains below till it finally meets the mighty Ganga. In the monsoons, the Kosi is a fast-flowing sheet of muddy brown water where an uneasy sense of calm and serenity pervades. Its braided channels spread like tentacles across a wide area creating a patchwork of rich brown water and lush green fields. The calm and serenity camouflages the appalling and miserable living conditions that the people of this region have grown accustomed to.

Yadav grew up on the banks of the Kosi. He understands the mood swings of the river. "You have to treat this river with respect, else you'll have to bear the consequences," he says. In other words, you cannot tame the Kosi by building embankments. There is no embankment that the Kosi has not breached.
The history of embankments The British learnt this lesson as early as the end of the 18th century. Constructing embankments was their idea. They thought embankments would prevent flood waters from spilling over into the agricultural areas along the river banks. They raised embankments and taxed the local people for the facilities provided to them. They chose the Yamuna, the Ganga and the Indus for irrigation but for flood control they zeroed in on another river -- the Damodar.

Shortly after constructing embankments in the Damodar in 1855, the British realised their folly. The flood levels rose and breached the embankments at many points. And, as the natural drainage channels of rainwater were obstructed by embankments, the roads and railway lines were full of stagnant pools of water, which were ideal for mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects to breed. This led to a malaria epidemic in Burdwan district of Bengal. The 'Damodar folly' put pressure on authorities to stop construction of embankments on the Kosi and other rivers in Bihar.

However, India never learnt from the 'Damodar folly'. In the 1950s, ambitious plans were drawn up to harness the rivers in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for hydroelectricity, irrigation and flood control. The Kosi multipurpose project was one such plan and soon after, in 1955, construction of embankment began. This spelt doom for thousands of people living in 338 villages on either side or within the embankments.

Hanuman Prasad, an old farmer who has seen it all, describes it as the veritable 'embankment trap'. "You have ruined the relationship we had with the river. It was a relationship of equals. By building embankments, you have given the river a bow. The stronger you make the bow the stronger will be the force of the arrow (water)," he says.

Restricting the river increases siltation on the river bed, thus raising its level and increasing the velocity of the flow. At places, the river begins to flow at a higher level than the surrounding countryside. And there is a limit to raising the height of the embankments.

"What was meant to protect us, has become a permanent source of misery for us. Our lands were the most fertile in the area. Today nobody wants to buy these lands. The only ones who have benefited are corrupt officials and contractors," says Manik Chandra Jha, a teacher in Satarwar village, who saw the embankments being built as a child.
Learning to live Bihar witnessed one of the worst floods of the century in 1987 when the Kamala embankments were breached at as many as 24 points. The Naupatta and Mahisi blocks in Saharsa district along the eastern embankment of the Kosi had to bear the brunt of the Kosi's wrath.

But the 1987 catastrophic floods were preceeded by the one in 1968. "It was during Durga puja. As we escaped taking with us the bare essentials, I saw the river carry away whatever we had left behind. The flood waters receded only after the river breached the embankment at four points," recalls Manoj Choudhry of Arrapatti village. Now the river has taught them how to live with floods and embankments. The fertile Gangetic plains in general, and the hot and humid plains of north Bihar in particular, have attracted settlers for centuries. The prospects of assured crops on rich fertile land created by several meandering silt laden rivers, have only encouraged people to risk the floods.

When the embank-ments were built, the government promised the affected people lands and jobs. The promises, however, remain mostly on paper or have been shoddily implemented. "I'm still waiting for a job," says Ram Vilas Sharma of Sirwar village in Mahisi block of Saharsa district. But Sharma was given land along the embankment on the protected side. "Soon we realised that this land was waterlogged and, therefore, useless. Conflict with other villagers over grazing land and the distance between our allotted plots (for houses) and the fields forced us to return to our original village," says a peeved Sharma. The original village was, of course, in between the flowing river and the embankment. But the impending floods did not deter him from going back. "I'd rather brave the floods than live under impossible conditions," says Sharma. The government, however, maintains that these people are not supposed to live near or within the embankments in the first place. Therefore, they are not the government's responsibility.

"People living within the embankments receive no aid from any government scheme, even though nearly all of us are below the poverty line. We have asked the local legislator for the embankment to be broken. But no one listens," says Prabhu Narayan Yadav, a resident of Belwara Punarwas.

Frustrated, some people along the Kamala river have taken to breaking the embankments. The government calls those who take recourse to such drastic action as 'anti-social' elements.

If floods are a seasonal catastrophic event, water-logging is a year-round problem. Today, it is estimated that there is permanent water-logging in over 182,000 hectares (ha) of land on the eastern Kosi embankment. On the west, the situation is even worse. This area between the Kosi and the Kamala embankments further to the west, did not earlier witness floods. But due to drainage problems, 94,000 ha of land remain under water the year round. Of this, 34,000 ha are reported to be beyond recovery.

Pushpa, 11, of Gonghe-pura village at the southern tip of the west Kosi embankment, gets to see her father only once in two or three years. "My father and uncle work in a factory in Delhi. They send us money every month," she says. But that is only if the postman is able to reach her village. Pushpa cannot even reach her school in the rainy season. Gonghepura is permanently waterlogged and inaccessible. Villagers have to walk 14 km to get a bus and the nearest health centre is two hours by boat. Every household has a makeshift 'monsoon home' on the embankment. It is used as a grazing ground for cattle and as a public toilet. Cases of dysentery and cholera are very common in these areas.

It is believed that a majority of the children working in the infamous carpet factories of Mirzapur come from Gonghepura. "Seeing our pathetic condition, nobody wants to marry their daughter into our village," says Bindeshwari Prasad Paswan, a villager.

Breach of trust
Dinesh Mishra, a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, came to this region to assist in disaster relief work after the 1984 floods. He was deeply moved by the miserable plight of the flood victims and was shocked at the callousness of the authorities. Along with the local people he set up the Barh Mukti Andolan ( bma ) - freedom from floods movement. He and his other colleagues in the bma have been relentlessly challenging the establishment and educating the people at the grassroots level on floods and embankments. Mishra believes that a breach of embankment is also a breach of trust - a trust that existed between the people and the builders of the embankments. He regrets the fact that the engineering community, the Vishwakarmas and the Bhaghiraths, have never discussed the limitations of their technologies. Says a sarcastic Mishra, "When you have politicians behaving like engineers and vice versa you will obviously land everyone in trouble. Unless these roles are kept in order, nothing will happen."

Meanwhile, the situation in Bihar is getting worse every year. The flood prone area in the state was 2.5 million ha in 1952. This has grown to 6.89 million ha in 1994 even as the length of the embankments along Bihar's rivers grew 160 km in 1954 to 3,465 km in 1998 at a cost of Rs 746 in crores. An investment that has done more harm than good.