Dear Mishra Ji & Friends,

The concerns of Shri D K Mishra are very genuine. Let me add to it some more.

To make an assessment of the Pre flood (or should we say
pre-waterlogging) situation in the Koshi area, recently I spent one
week in a remote village on the banks of Koshi along with another
journalist friend of Bihar Chintan Shri Chandrashekharam. (A small
reportage enclosed)

After we returned, we had a meeting at Khagaria of some 50 odd people
belonging to Voluntary organisations and some respectatable people of
Civil Society to discuss the issue. We felt that most of us wait for
the annual floods to come. many of our NGO friends have already drawn
plans for relief work for the ensuing flood. But what we need to be
concerned about is some measures that we could take before the flood
to meet some basic and essential needs of those who are going to be
affected. There are some very basic needs that could be addressed
including (1) Constructing temporary community latrines out of bamboo
(2) Make some arrangement of drinking water by a) providing hand pumps
at the embankment where they take shelter for three months or so b)
arrange for some additional pipes to raise the head of existing hand
pumps in the waterlogged area, keep adequate quantities of Halogen
tablets for cleaning of water or any such other method (3) make
arrangements for the fodder to the cattle and (4) make some kind of
hospital on boat with a qualified doctor and some basic medicines
holding regular OPD in one village which is centrally located in a
cluster. Snake-bite medicines and other SOS medicines can be kept as
first aid kit in each village . These basic support will go a long way
in making the sufferings of people much less. As the flood recedes, we
need good amount of disinfectant such as bleaching powder in those
areas. They altogether cost very little and if all those who work in
these areas could pool even some personal contribution it could be
organised easily. The question, however, is are we prepared for such a
'tedious and non-glamourous' initiative?

My personal feeling is that we must think of a viable alternative to
our dependence on 'external' support. We can't even depend on
government support as it would come on 15th hour, if at all it comes
and in whatever measure it comes. The basic question here is that
have our villages lost their own internal energies to take care of
their basic needs even? Can't we harness the internal resources and
work out an independent mechanism? I am not proposing that we should
leave the government alone or should not make them accountable for
delegating their responsibilities. We must. For example, we are about
to hear from the district ot local administration that "all the
preperations for dealing with flood are done". We must ask them to
spell out in clear terms as to what are the preparations they have
done? Similarly, there is a need to do a very hard and consistant
lobbying with polititians to educate them about the dynamics and
reality of flood so that they get out of the 'Nepal Syndrome', which
essentially is an 'ostrich alibi' and nothing else.

But leaving apart these bigger quetions we must do some modest
beginning at the local level with local resources. What could be the
actual modality of such an initiative? To understand this in a better
way some of us are planning to undertake Pad Yatra in the area. We
felt that Katyayani Sthan (between Mansi and Saharsa near Dhamara Ghat
Railway Station), Kusheshwar Sthan and Sigheswar Sthan makes a
triangle which is worse affected by the water logging. So we are
planning to undertake first of our Pad yatra between Kusheshwar Sthan
to Katyayani sthan towards the mid of the month of May. Later we will
go from Kusheshwar to Sigheshwar also. What we intend to do is to
interact with the villagers and work out some initiatives that they
themselves could take before the flood comes. We would like to invite
those interested in Botany, zoology, geology, medicine, environment,
soil and so on to come with us. We plan to launch on this yatra
without any money with us. We will depend upon the villagers to take
care of us (and we are confident that they will) as we take shelter in
a village and have meetings there. If we get good support from frinds
we can come up with an authentic report which will help us understand
the situation more closely and lobby with various people about some
initiatives that can be taken locally.

Subsequently, we could think of holding a meeting at Patna involving
NGOs, polititians, bureaucrats, members of civil society to draw
attention to the issue of flood in early June.

Your suggestions and response would be great help in materialising the
Bihar Chintan initiative, as always.

Thanks and regards,

Vagish K Jha

----- Original Message -----
From: Dinesh Kumar Mishra
To: biharchintan@...
Cc: Kumar,Dalip ; mathewc@... ; sushant@... ;
ctddsf ; gpf@... ; anilg@... ;
samta_khagaria@... ; mansoormozaffar@... ;
nelabh@...
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 8:25 AM
Subject: [biharchintan] Bihar Floods

Bihar Flood Dispatch-1
19th March 2005

Bihar will be exposed to the fury of rivers this year and the setting
is getting complete because of non-formation of the Government. Water
Resources Department of the state had identified 280 schemes to be
taken up on to prevent breaches in the embankments. As a customary,
all the works on the Kosi embankments are completed before March every
year. All other maintenance and repair works are completed by the end
of May. Nothing has been done so far because the decisions are delayed
and the files are shuttling between various sections of the Department
of Water Resources, in the absence of a popular Government. A decision
to allocate funds and finalize works could not be taken in the last
meeting of the state cabinet and now, there is no cabinet. Unless
something is done on the emergent basis, the state would be in trouble
in months to come as breaches in the embankments would put people to
lot of trouble.

It is an irony of fate that if the embankments do not breach, the
drainage of the country would be jeopardized and the people would
suffer acute waterlogging. We would soon listen, in observance of the
annual ritual, that negotiations are on with Nepal and the
Barahkshetra Dam would be built at the earliest and all the problem of
the state would be solved.

Dinesh Mishra


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