Floods-Need For A Compensation Code
 

Dinesh Kumar Mishra
 

There is a growing tendency to call any disaster as a Natural Calamity and hence
deal with it as disaster. This leads to the use of terms like disaster
preparedness, disaster mitigation and rehabilitation phase. What used to be
said, as opportunity for development afforded by disasters is becoming more of a
rule than exception? While one would readily accept Tsunami or an earthquake as
a disaster, it is difficult to extend the same definition to drought and floods
in many areas of the country that have definite season of rains and scarcities.
This, when a huge capital has been invested in irrigation and flood control in
these places.
 

Going back in the history, there was an engineer named Robert Green Kennedy
during the British period to whom goes the credit of assessing the waterlogging
problem in the canal fed areas. He found (1873) while working in North Eastern
parts of the country that only 28 per cent of the water released from the canal
Head Works actually reached the fields and the remaining water was lost in
transit, some of it in evaporation and most of it in seepage. The seepage water
was instrumental in raising the water table leading to the waterlogging of the
fields and loss of production. When he suggested that if the government was
charging canal rates from the farmers for irrigation and taking credit for
improved production, it should also accept the responsibility of waterlogging
the fields of a sizable number of farmers and should compensate the farmers for
the losses they incurred, thus. Nothing of that sort happened and Kennedy was
shifted to the battlefields of Afghanistan for reminding the state of its
obligations to its clients. He had to spend 18 long years there but that did not
dampen his spirits and when he returned from Afghanistan in 1893, he started his
work on waterlogging once again where he had left in 1873.
 

Kennedy belonged to a rare breed of professionals who could remind the state of
its obligations. In many states, canal rates are charged from the farmers simply
because his fields are located in the command area of canals irrespective of the
fact he may not be getting any irrigation. Such farmers, in an attempt to avoid
confiscation of their properties and humiliation before the entire village
quietly pay the taxes levied on them. Let us forget, for the time being, the
revenue collection part of the canals; but is it not legitimate for the farmers
to ask for compensation when the canal system virtually collapses in some cases
as it happened some years ago in Gujarat when virtually all the dams that are
there became dry.
 

Similarly, in many flood prone states, the government has worked to protect some
areas against flooding. The phrase ‘partial protection against floods’ has come
into use, of late.
Bihar, for example, has a flood affected area of 68.8 lakh hectares against 94
lakh hectares of the total area. Only 29 lakh hectares of the state is
‘partially protected against floods’ in the state. Remaining nearly 40 lakh
hectares is yet to be protected. While it is the responsibility of the
Government to tell its people how and when the Government is going to provide
protection to the remaining area of 40 lakh hectares; will it be too much to ask
for compensation to loss of life and property that the Government claims it has
protected against floods. A cursory look at the map of the flood prone area
suggests that the most flooded area of the state are the ones that the
Government says it has protected. This has happened because of the reckless
construction of the roads, railway lines, embankments, canals, and village roads
without any regard to the drainage of the country leading to massive drainage
congestion. While continuing its efforts on each of the causes that have led to
the deterioration of the drainage, the Government of Bihar wants the Disaster
Management Department of the State to manage floods as disaster and that
department is doing its duty without ever indicating the Water Resources
Department of the state that much of its bread comes out of the follies
committed by the latter.
 

What has being happening in Mumbai since 2005 or in Gujarat and Rajasthan ever
since was basically the encroachment of the river basin where the Government was
a silent spectator. One could close one’s eyes when the floods there were the
real disaster, i.e., they occurred without giving any forewarning. The disaster
in those states is loosing its teeth because it is becoming more a way of life,
an annual pre-determined event. If the state were serious about curbing the
menace, it should not have been happening time and again. Most of this
encroachment was done at the behest of the politicians and the
bureaucrats.  Andhra Pradesh has an ambitious plan for embanking its
coastal rivers to control floods and has made huge allocations for the same. Let
a team of AP engineers / bureaucrats / social workers visit Bihar or eastern UP
and see for themselves and talk to the affected families directly what havoc
embanking of the rivers has created in those places. Situation in the
Brahmaputra Valley in Assam is no different either.
 

Since there is no likelihood of people’s resistance getting strong enough on a
national basis against the vested interests in earthwork, let us think of a
Compensation Code, instead of the infamous ‘Relief Code’ where the establishment
would go ahead with its programs without taking any lessons from anywhere and
the victims would be compensated for all the losses they suffer during such
man-made calamities. There is no reason in asking right to relief, it is a dole
after all, and makes beggar of a respectful citizen.  Most of the NGOs who
are trying to dig out antique provisions of the British Period for provide
relief to the people during Natural Calamities (unfortunately they are not, and
in most cases people know the men who made it) should strive to draft a
Compensation Code, and insist that to be enacted by Parliament and grounded for
the benefit of the flood or drought victims.  After all, the nation got the
Right to Information despite all odds.
 

Dinesh Kumar Mishra
Convenor- Barh Mukti Abhiyan
Road No: 6B, Rajeev Nagar
Patna 800024, Bihar
Mob: +919431303360
E-Mail: dineshkmishra@...
7th July 2007

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