By Priyanka Khanna, IANS,
Supaul (Bihar) : Thirty days after Kosi, a young, unsettled and ever-angry river, breached a barrage on the India-Nepal border and shifted its course 120 km eastward, the over four million survivors in eastern India’s Bihar state are bracing themselves for tougher times ahead.
Known as the ‘sorrow of Bihar’, Kosi went back to a course it had abandoned more than 300 years ago after it broke its banks at Kusaha in Nepal Aug 18.
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.
About 4.34 million people from 2,451 villages in 17 districts were declared ‘affected’ due to flood in the state with five districts – Supaul, Saharsa, Madhepura, Purnea and Araria being the ‘most affected’.
According to Pratyaya Amrit, additional commissioner, Bihar Disaster Management Department: “Over 3.02 million people of 1,021 villages have been severely affected in these districts out of which 0.75 million (750,000) are children between 0-9 years.”
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.
More than a million people have been evacuated from the affected areas out of which 344,588 people are staying in 359 government-run relief camps in the five worst-affected districts, according to government reports.
An unspecified number are staying on raised grounds near their marooned homes so that they can go back to their homes at least once a day and check on whatever is left of their homes. These people, who are mainly from less-affected villages that were the last to get inundated, are not willing to move to relief camps and are largely dependent on help from non-government and community-based organisations.
With water receding over the last one week due to decrease in rainfall in Nepal, many people are even going back to their homes in complete defiance of government warnings. And yet another chunk of people are those who have been staying on in their marooned dwellings for the last 30 days in the hope that the water will recede.
On Sep 16, government stopped air-dropping food packages for these people.
Food and medical care are the immediate concerns for the survivors. Though there are large-scale allegations of swindling, on the whole, the huge humanitarian and government response has ensured that basic food requirements are met.
For marooned people as well as those who are returning to their homes to find rotting animal carcasses, diseases pose the greatest threat. The mushy approach roads to their dwellings are making efforts to sanitise the areas even more difficult. An agency that sent bleaching powder to areas where water had just receded said it took four change of tractors.
NGOs, international agencies and even government doctors are warning that poor environment of sanitation conditions are leading to disease outbreaks. So far, the government’s disease surveillance system has reported eight deaths due to diseases.
Deepak Kumar, principal secretary, health and family welfare, said in a press conference that of the over 250,000 cases of mild illness seen by doctors in flood-affected areas, about 14,000 cases were of diarrhoea.
Given the low levels of hygiene practices, poor healthcare-seeking behaviour and low visibility of medical camps, the number of sick may be far more than those reported. As of now the government has, nonetheless, managed to contain any major outbreak of diseases. It has come in for praise from a range of observers.
In fact, life in the government-run relief camps is fast beginning to resemble routine life. Some learning centres have opened, some Anganwadi Centres are opening, water sources are being cleaned, toilets have been put up and 10 tents have been put up that act as labour rooms for delivery of babies.
Once the food distribution has taken place, life pretty much starts unfolding in a routine until news of separated ones comes into the camp, suddenly reminding one of Kosi’s fury.
All conversations in the camps revolve around what will happen in the long run. The silt brought by the Kosi is like poison for the soil of the affected area. The river has been notorious for centuries for destroying the land it touches.
But the people of Bihar have a long history of facing the wrath of Kosi bravely. As they say, ‘this too shall pass’.