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Dinesh Kumar Mishra

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Other States - Bihar

More than a lakh hit by Bagmati breach



Shoumojit Banerjee



Silt or embankments to blame for deluge?






PATNA: The riparian imbroglio in North Bihar which began on Saturday morning
with the Bagmati breaching its embankment at Tilak Tajpur, affecting more than
one lakh people, has prompted some pertinent questions to be asked of the Nitish
Kumar Government.

As of today, the water levels continue to abate. According to latest reports,
the breach is almost plugged with about 20 metres remaining. But raging issues
remain, for Saturday’s discharge was a mere 700 cusecs of water.

The issue at the heart of the matter is whether dams and embankments are the
solution to end North Bihar’s sorrow? Or is the unwitting villager sitting on a
powder keg euphemistically manifesting itself as a “strengthened” embankment?

Speaking to The Hindu, Barh Mukti Abhiyan (Freedom From Floods Campaign)
convenor Dinesh Kumar Mishra informs that ever since its completion in 1978 the
Bagmati embankment has been breached at least 50 times.

“It was breached earlier in 2007. Though officials put the number at a
conservative 20, the embankment has been breached at least 50 times, with the
river causing gaps in 16 points in 1993,” says Mr. Mishra, who has been working
in the Ganga and Brahmaputra river basins in Bihar since 1992.

He said the basic duty of a river is to assimilate water in its catchments, but
the Bagmati being a very fertile river, it brings along with it a large
proportion of silt and sediment.

The problem starts when this silt, which is confined within the embankments,
starts raising the height of the riverbed. This in turns causes the breach.

According to Mr. Mishra, the other insidious problem was the gradual spreading
of the Bagmati riverbed eastwards towards the Muzzafarpur-Sitamarhi road. “The
river itself is too shallow; it is the riverbed that is aggravated thus causing
the damage. It is like converting cats into tigers,” says he.

Similar concerns were aired by the Chief Minister while talking to media persons
on Monday. He said while the Bagmati itself was subdued, it was “the problem of
draining out the excess floodwater that led to the breach”. The Chief Minister
has accordingly sent out officials from the State Irrigation Department to
rectify the drainage problem apart from constituting a high-power committee to
probe the quality of the embankments.

“Materials used in building the embankments are usually sand walls and other
locally available stuff, which are not very cohesive at all. As a result, water
seeps through them,” says Mr. Mishra. This reflects glaring loopholes in the
embankment work, which was undertaken at a cost of Rs. 792 crores.

While NDRF relief teams are carrying on with distribution of relief material,
the fate of people near the embankments hangs in balance. While more than 20,000
people have taken to open roads, many more are afraid of returning to their
homes fearing a recurrence of events.

“People who chose to live inside the embankments are incessantly mauled by the
river, while those outside live in continual dread of being swept away,” says
Mr. Mishra. He says the main problem lies in rooting out the silt.








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THE Hindu, Dated 6th August 2009

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