A TALE OF TWO BIHARS
The state is flood- and drought-hit at the same time, complicating response and relief
Rahimbigha, nestled in the foothills of Khakhaunda Pahad in Bihar, is a picturesque and mostly peaceful village in the Nawada district of Bihar. Especially when compared to its Maoism-hit cousin across the mountains, Koderma in Jharkhand. But every day, the women of this largely Dalit hamlet have to make a serpentine pilgrimage across its barren landscape. They are on their way to collect water from an abandoned stone quarry as the hand-pump the government installed in their village has run dry. This is because the water table has sunk dramatically after a poor monsoon. “Our women have to
trek twice a day for water. It takes them an hour,” says Vijay Rajwar, a member of the village panchayat samiti.
And in a twist of irony, some 225 kilometres away, in Darbhanga district, the 300-odd inhabitants of Kusheshwar Asthan are forced to wade through waist-high water in the wake of a flood that is playing havoc with their homes and belongings.
Floods have affected as many as 2.35 million families this year, across 13 districts of the state, killing 133 people. Simultaneously, 24 districts in Bihar have been identified as droughthit. Four of these districts—Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Madhubani and Sitamarhi—have been declared both flood- and drought-hit. In fact, in November last year, Kusheshwar Asthan was among the blocks declared drought-affected by the state disaster management department.
“It is ironic, but not strange,” says a senior official in Darbhanga. “Different blocks of a district may have different problems at different times of the year. But, yes, our water resources engineers certainly need to manage the situation better than they have done so far.”
The river Ganga cuts across the middle of the state, with the Himalayan rivers feeding the north Bihar plains, and the central Indian rivers, the south Bihar plains. As the rivers Ghaghra, Gandak, Bagmati, Kosi, Kamala, Mahananda and others make their way down from Nepal in frequently changing channels, the north Bihar plain, located less than 250 feet above sea level, becomes prone to flooding. Increasing deforestation has also led to the denudation of vegetation cover in the catchment areas of Nepal, loading the rivers with more silt. The bed slope of these rivers also drops suddenly as they enter Bihar, forcing them to deposit the silt they carry. The state’s demands for a dam and reservoir remain unmet. The Saptakosi high dam project in Nepal, for instance, has run into various hurdles over compensation and resettlement.
The south Bihar plains, on the other hand, have, with the exception of the Son, smaller rivers. Mainly darkish clay or poor sandy soils characterise this region. The land is usually parched with relatively low average rainfall of 1,102 mm, compared with 1,235 mm and 1,382 mm in the northwestern and northeastern zones. Irrigation infrastructure is also inadequate. While the state’s agriculture is mainly rain-fed, and particularly dependent on the southwestern monsoon, only 57 per cent of the state’s cultivated area is irrigated.
The erratic rainfall, frequent floods and drought collectively play havoc with crop production cycles, with the agriculture yield deficit reaching 33 per cent. The cost of natural calamities in the state is mounting steadily. If the state disaster management department spent Rs 85 crore in 2015-16, the amount went up to a staggering Rs 1,569 crore in 2016-17. This year, the state had already spent over Rs 200 crore till August. Ex gratia payments of Rs 4 lakh have been announced for the families of the deceased; flood-affected families will get Rs 6,000 each. Drought compensation has been fixed
at Rs 6,800 per hectare for rain-fed agriculture and Rs 13,500 for irrigation-supported agriculture. At a review meeting last month, chief minister Nitish Kumar told district magistrates to prepare a panchayat-wise status report on drought in their jurisdiction and ensure that farmers got a diesel subsidy.
However, as the senior official in Darbhanga points out, “During floods, the role of the district administration gets reduced to relief and resettlement. We run community kitchens and pat ourselves on the backs for taking good care of our people. But we need to focus on prevention of floods, and if not that, then providing a passage to flood water. The flood waters stay on for over a month.”
The state’s Agriculture Road Map III, therefore, addresses issues of water-logging in Bihar’s rainfallsurplus regions and facilitating water availability in rainfall-deficit regions. This is in addition to schemes to boost climate-resilient agriculture and credit access, the availability of water for irrigation and building irrigation structures.
Nitish also has great faith in the interlinking of rivers and the desilting of the Ganga, Kosi and Gandak rivers. The Centre’s approval last month for the Rs 4,900 crore project to inter-link the Kosi and Mechi rivers has come as a shot in the arm for the state. The project is expected to prevent recurring floods in north Bihar, and also irrigate over 214,000 hectares of cultivable land in Araria, Purnea, Kishanganj and Katihar districts.
All this is of little consolation right now to Ramanand Jha, a trader in Orgama village in Darbhanga, who lost 700 bags of cement after his hardware shop caved in due to floods. “This was my rozi-roti,” he says. “I lost more than Rs 3 lakh.”
Some 200 km away, in Sarkatia village of Nawada district, sexagenarian Kailash Yadav can be seen crossing the dry Tilaiya riverbed on foot, a water pitcher strapped to his cycle. The load is too precious for Yadav to ride the cycle himself. Life goes on in the two Bihars.