Keywords: Kosi, Floods, Bihar, Embankment, Disaster.
Kosi or the Sapta-Koshi (named after its seven tributaries: The Sun Kosi, Indravati, Dudh Kosi, Tama Kosi, Likhu Khola, Arun & Bhote Kosi) is a transboundary Himalayan River, which flows through Tibet & Nepal before entering India at Bhimnagar and finally meets the River Ganga at Kursela, Bihar. Along with having a length of about 720 Km and a total catchment area of about 71,500 km, Kosi holds important historical significance too, it had been mentioned in ancient epics like Mahabharata as “Kausiki”, in Valmiki Ramayana, and also in Markandeya Purana as a primal force, due to its violent nature.
However, in recent times, it has earned a new name “The Sorrow of Bihar,” primarily because of the devastating annual floods that its constant course changes bring to the region. It is said to have changed its course by about 150 km westwards in the last 200 years alone.
There have been several attempts to tame the river and control the floods in the past by government authorities since the pre-colonial era, but it formally began in 1955 as the Kosi embankment project after a major flood in 1953, then Prime Minister Nehru, surveyed the flood-affected regions of Bihar and was deeply affected by seeing the plight and misery of the people and decided for an immediate measure to tackle the floods and the only economically viable solution which came up at the time was the construction of embankments along the Kosi River to stop it from changing its course any further. The decision was welcomed by many but was also strongly opposed by the population who were going to be trapped inside the embankments (comprising around 300 villages).
But the idea of construction of embankments was not new, even in pre-colonial times, farmers and zamindars used to make earthen embankments which were known as ‘bundhs’ over small tracts of land to protect their crops from floods but it was never meant to permanently stop the flood waters, instead, it brought down the damages and allowed the water to flow down the stream freely, instead of constraining it. Kosi also brought lots of silt annually with it, which was significant for improving the fertility of the fields naturally.
But this changed with the advent of the British Raj in India, Britishers brought with them the idea of building large-scale embankments aimed at permanently preventing floods, with the help of local zamindars and tax collectors (Gill & Paswan, 2018). Large sections of rivers were embanked to promote commercial farming and to protect their expanding roads & rail networks.
It began with the construction of the first railway services in Bengal in 1854 (from Howrah to Raniganj), then in 1855, the Damodar embankments were constructed for the protection of rail lines and making the area, ‘watertight’ (Mishra, 1997).
But these embankments prevented water from outside from entering the river as well, causing prolonged flooding and often resulting in the area becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes and various water-borne diseases. Later in the year 1861, various charitable dispensaries were also opened by the British government for this particular reason (Mishra, 1997).
The high velocity of water unleashed after the breaking of embankments brought enormous damages too, which used to happen quite frequently (Gill & Paswan, 2018). On one hand, the loss of silt affected the fertility of the agricultural fields while on the other hand, the sedimentation inside the embankments caused the rise of the riverbed even more rapidly due to constrained space available to the river for spreading, hence making the river super-elevated and leading it to overflow the embankments or even break them while changing its course to the lower grounds with enormous intensity, inflicting even more damages.
One of the British engineers, Captain G F Hall mentioned, “bundhs obstruct the free flow of water and accentuate instead of relieving the intensity of floods”. However, the demands of British capitalism decided otherwise and the idea of constructing embankments as a permanent measure of flood mitigation, instead of a preventive one, continued in the independent India.
After the enactment of the National Flood Control Policy in 1954, several plans were made to mitigate the situation of floods in North Bihar, which included the construction of a barrage in Bhimnagar, the construction of embankments of length of around 150 km long and 50 m wide along the Kosi River and a multipurpose dam in Kalakshetra, Nepal (which was never formalized due to various challenges and roadblocks in the treaty between India and Nepal’s government).
The construction of embankments started in 1955 and ended in 1959, and was welcomed as a grand plan which would be successful in taming the Kosi and relieving the people from the constant annual flooding and devastation, the government even released a documentary film by its films division which boldly declared that “a wild, capricious river has finally been tamed…” and how the project will bring great prosperity in the region and take people in the region out of their prolonged misery. But the results were far from what was anticipated, the project which originally aimed to protect over 2,14,000 hectares of land from flooding, as per the report by Bihar State Irrigation Commission (1994), more than 4,26,000 hectares were lost to waterlogging (Dixit, 2009).
In the recent major breach of the Kosi embankment in Kusaha on August 18, 2008; in which more than 400 people lost their lives, 3,22,169 houses were damaged and around 3.38 lakh hectares of crop area were destroyed (Mishra, 2008). The authorities responsible for the maintenance and inspection of the embankments stated the climatic events (excessive rainfall) to be the reason behind the breach but in reality, the discharge of water on the day of the breach was 4,729 cubic meters per sec. While the maximum discharge as previously reported by the government data was 25,878 cubic meters per sec in 1981, which is around six times higher, so we can only imagine if that would have been the situation that day, how worse the destruction it would have caused? (Dixit, 2009).
Gill & Paswan in their report mention that just two days before the embankment breach, the chief engineer of the Kosi project of Bihar’s water resources department (BWRD) visited the site and denied any danger there, neither did the people receive any prior warnings to prepare themselves, the locals and the government authorities just believed that the structure wouldn’t fail despite its long history of breaches in the past. This unpreparedness inflicted even more damage and took more lives which could have been prevented if they had been prepared for any such danger in advance.
Despite witnessing such repetitive disasters, the focus of government authorities still relies solely on structural measures like raising embankments and proposing for big dam as a permanent solution while the non-structural measures like flood plain zoning, watershed management, flood forecasting and disaster preparedness continue to be neglected at greater extents. As Dinesh Mishra in his article quotes, instead of using flood water as a resource, a major section of scientists and engineers are bent on dealing with it as a problem.
The villagers in the area, who were once accustomed to moving with the river’s flow and benefiting from the silt it once brought to their fields are now divided into two different sections, the ones who fall inside of the embankments are completely on the mercy of the river and live under the constant danger of sudden floods in their temporary homes with uncertainty and are denied of any basic facilities like health & education, while those on the outside, live with the danger of constant embankment breaches, waterlogging and with agricultural lands that can’t get naturally fertilized with the alluvium anymore. The advent of modern technologies which was deemed as a permanent solution to the age-old problem has done far more damage than good. Neither has it been able to captivate the river, nor has it been able to reduce its intensity, which has rather increased over the years.
The social and political ethos of the authorities don’t have the space to carry out the regular inspection and maintenance of the embankments; despite spending a major chunk of the disaster funds on the management of these infrastructures, corruption grapples the system while millions live in constant danger of floods taking away their lives and livelihoods. And the rives which was once regarded by the locals as their mother, has suddenly turned into the sorrow of Bihar.
- Reshu Kumar
References:
- Dasgupta, S. (2021). The Hydro-political History of the first Indo-Nepal Koshi River Agreement (1954). Epitome Journals, 7(5), 43-51. https://www.epitomejournals.com/VolumeArticles/FullTextPDF/538_Research_Paper.pdf
- Dixit, A. (2009). Kosi Embankment Breach in Nepal: Need for a Paradigm Shift in Responding to Floods. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(6), 70–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40278487
- Gill, P., & Paswan, B. (2018). Ten years after the catastrophic Koshi embankment breach. Dialogue Earth. Retrieved from: https://dialogue.earth/en/water/koshi-river-bihar/dammed history of the Koshi | Dialogue Earth (Accessed on: 25/10/24)
- Mishra, D. K. (1997). The Bihar Flood Story. Economic and Political Weekly, 32(35), 2206–2217. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4405794
- Mishra, D. K. (2008). The Kosi and the Embankment Story. Economic and Political Weekly, 43(46), 47–52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40278181
- Mishra, D. K. (2001). Living with Floods: People’s Perspective. Economic and Political Weekly, 36(29), 2756–2761. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4410885
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