By IANS,
New Delhi : One month after an errant Kosi river shifted course triggering the worst floods in Bihar’s memory and affecting about four million people, India’s water worries showed no signs of ending Thursday, with incessant rain displacing many thousands in Orissa, West Bengal and even in parched Gujarat.
The rains cut a swathe of destruction not just in eastern India with Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal coping with rising waters but also in Gujarat right across in the west.
Exactly 30 days after the Kosi breached a barrage on the India-Nepal border and shifted its course 120 km eastward on Aug 18, the rains continued to create havoc.
In Orissa, about one million people were displaced, in West Bengal the figure was 60,000 and in dry Gujarat about 10,000 people had to be evacuated.
Bihar was, of course, the worst hit with about 4.34 million people from 2,451 villages in 17 districts declared ‘affected’.
Overnight, scores of villages which had not experienced flooding in living memory became the bed of a raging river that is over 30 km wide and stretches across more than half the state which is home to 880 persons per square km or 90.75 million people. At the peak of the flooding, more than 290,000 hectares of agriculture land was submerged.
The government has put the total human death toll at 125 but mourners telling their stories in the cramped and anxiety-struck relief camps say they saw scores of people scooped away by the brutal current.
“I saw 150 people of my village swept away. One woman went into labour and drowned as she could not climb any rooftop,” said locally elected village representative Ram Harianand.
If the Kosi did the damage in Bihar, a deep depression in the Bay of Bengal did the trick in the other states.
Ceaseless rain triggered flash floods in Orissa killing at least three people and impacting nearly one million, officials said. Unofficial sources put the death toll across the state at 10.
As it continued to pour in many parts of the state, the government announced that all schools in the four worst hit districts of Cuttack, Puri, Kendrapada and Jagatsinghpur would be closed Friday and Saturday.
The state has 11 major rivers, and water levels in many of them have risen above danger level, Additional Commissioner (Relief) Benudhar Das said.
Heavy rains over the last three days and flooding had affected at least 12 of the 30 districts and marooned over 30 villages. The number affected could be about a million, the official said.
In West Bengal, over 60,000 people were affected and 10,000 houses washed away in East Midnapore, South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas districts by huge tidal surges in Bay of Bengal, said Finance Minister Ashim Dasgupta.
“We have allocated Rs.20 million towards flood relief and Rs.100 million towards repair of the dams Thursday. The amount will increase as when and when required,” Dasgupta said.
“Forty seaside stalls and three hundred fishing boats have been washed away so far. A high security red alert has been announced to all fishermen. Tourists have been forbidden to go near the sea. Even ground floors of a few hotels have been flooded with seawater,” a source added Thursday evening.
In Gujarat, several dams in its water starved Saurashtra region overflowed but there was little time to rejoice with many areas and arterial roads flooded and people marooned in their homes following incessant rain.
Though there was some respite from the rain, the met office held out little hope predicting heavy rainfall for most districts in the state.
About 10,000 people have been evacuated from various villages in the most affected areas.
“We evacuated nearly 4,000 people yesterday. There has been no loss of life in the district,” Surendranagar District Collector J.D. Bhatt told IANS.
Surendranagar is one of the seven district of Saurashtra — the others being Rajkot, Amreli, Bhavnagar, Junagadh, Jamnagar and Porbandar.
Saurashtra has received 43 percent water in its dams, but 72 percent of its dams are full. Though Kutch is still crying for rain, the bounty may have come at a price with the heavy rains threatening life and livelihoods.