Can Bihar’s flood-affected voters make their voice heard amid endless floods?

Between Bihar’s 17th Legislative Assembly (2020) and the forthcoming elections for the 18th (2025), the state has lived a story told not through speeches but through rising waters. Each monsoon has triggered rivers that swell with relentless regularity, overwhelm embankments that give way, and overturn countless lives.

During this period, nearly 30 million people across Bihar have experienced flooding, with 31 of its 38 districts submerged more than once, according to Form IX (2020–2024) and the Daily Flood Situation Report (as of October 14, 2025) from the Disaster Management Department of Bihar. From Kishanganj to Pashchim Champaran, floods have become an unchanging rhythm of distress, where recovery and relapse follow one another in a tragic cycle of neglect.

Floods in Bihar are not isolated calamities. They are the state’s most persistent electoral issue, even if seldom treated as such. In 2020, over ten million people were affected across 19 districts, and in 2025, nearly 4.7 million faced the deluge, a cruel reminder that decades of promises and investments have not significantly reduced vulnerability.

Each monsoon, schools shutter, farms are washed away, and families are forced to migrate seasonally. These repeated losses of crops, homes, and hope fold into an entrenched economy of despair.

North Bihar is one of the most flood-prone regions in the world, with around 73 per cent of its geographical area exposed. The National Remote Sensing Centre’s Flood Hazard Atlas (2020) confirmed that 6.86 million hectares out of 9.41 million remain vulnerable to inundation. Marginal farmers, sharecroppers, and women-headed households bear the heaviest burden, stripped of both assets and agency. For millions, floods are not episodic, but a recurring reality that defines livelihoods and life itself.

Between 2020 and 2025, floods have systematically undermined Bihar’s economic stability and agricultural productivity. According to the Bihar Economic Survey (2024-25), the state government allocated Rs 42,373 million for flood and cyclone management during 2021-22 to 2023-24, and Rs 1,128 million in 2024-25 (up to September 2024).

Expenditure on irrigation and flood control increased by 87.1 per cent in 2023-24, totalling Rs 73,820 million, with capital outlay rising from 38.9 per cent in 2019-20 to 79.6 per cent in 2023-24. Crop losses exceeding 33 per cent due to floods or hailstorms qualify for support under the Krishi Input Subsidy Scheme, providing Rs 17,000 per hectare for irrigated crops, Rs 8,500 for unirrigated crops, and Rs 22,500 for perennial crops.

To strengthen technical and research capacity, the World Bank-assisted Bihar Kosi Basin Development Project (BKBDP) is establishing a Physical Modelling Centre (PMC) at Birpur, Supaul, as a Centre of Excellence under the Water Resources Department. The PMC will study river hydraulics, structures, morphology, and flood behaviour to inform flood protection and anti-erosion projects.

Despite decades of investment, Bihar’s flood management remains an unsettling chronicle of misplaced faith in embankments. Since the 1950s, over 3,700 kilometres of embankments have been constructed in North Bihar, yet the flood-affected area has expanded rather than shrunk. Silt trapped by embankments elevates riverbeds, forcing waters to breach with greater ferocity. Rivers entering from Nepal rush down steep gradients before flattening, depositing massive sediment loads that choke channels.

Each embankment breach is a metaphor for governance failure. Contractors benefit from repair contracts renewed annually. Politicians gain from the optics of relief distribution, and the system thrives on cyclical disbursements. Flood control funds, far from mitigating floods, have created an economy of dependency and patronage. The recurring damage underscores that Bihar’s flood problem is as much political as it is environmental.

As Bihar approaches the November 2025 elections, the flood becomes its truest campaigner, silent, unforgiving, and consistent. Each villager wading through waist-deep water carries a verdict on governance. Will flood management remain confined to false assurances, or will it shape the political imagination?

Flood-affected constituencies hold transformative potential. If voters mobilise around long-term resilience instead of short-term relief, they can redefine Bihar’s electoral narrative. Three questions must guide this shift:

• Will budgets include district-specific flood mitigation plans integrating irrigation, drainage, and livelihood diversification?

• Will embankment repairs be publicly audited and inundation data made transparent through geospatial platforms?

• Will relief and compensation reach victims through accountable, leak-proof systems?

Flood management cannot be only a technical or hydrological exercise; it is a moral and human challenge. North Bihar’s rivers — Gandak, Burhi Gandak, Bagmati, Kamla-Balan, Bhutahi Balan, Kosi, Kankai, Mahananda, and others — carry both destruction and fertility. Sustainability lies not in resisting their flow, but in designing life around their rhythm. Basin-level planning across districts and Nepal, community-led governance by panchayats, integrated livelihoods, and restored wetlands and river corridors are essential. Preparedness, not just rescue, must define policy.

Behind every displaced family lies a deeper question of governance and dignity. Relief camps provide temporary shelter and food but cannot restore freedom from fear. The presence of boats, resilient housing, raised schools, and all-weather roads remains minimal. Each year’s deluge washes away the previous year’s repairs, showing that this is not only a story of rivers but of power and its absence. Governance failure, not nature, has normalised disaster and eroded accountability.

Every monsoon, Bihar’s rivers deliver their judgement through breached embankments, submerged fields, and disrupted lives. They expose fragile institutions, misplaced priorities, and the widening gulf between promises and action. If the 2025 election can mark a turning point, leadership must listen not only to voters but to rivers. To live with floods does not mean surrender, it means designing systems where loss does not repeat, and governance becomes as reliable as the monsoon itself.

Bihar’s choice is moral as well as political. Either governance drifts, waiting for the next inundation, or it rebuilds trust, district by district, embankment by embankment, life by life. The waters will rise again. What matters is whether accountability rises with them. Only then will Bihar’s truest campaigner, the flood, be answered not with apathy, but with action.

Eklavya Prasad is managing trustee, Megh Pyne Abhiyan. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth