Flood Dispatch-5 / 2005.

The Sinking Foundation of Task Force Report (2005) -1

Comments on the Report of the Task Force For Flood Management /Erosion Control have been awaited since long and here are some details.

The report that was submitted to the Government of India in December 2004 and no one ever talked about the same, at least, in Bihar. While the floods are knocking at the doorstep, the repairs of the embankments in Bihar is still incomplete and, as the reports suggest, only 40 per cent of the work has been completed so far.

It was only an through an article written by former Minister of Agriculture at the Center, Chaturanan Mishra (Dinik Hindustan 22nd March 2005) about the recommendations of the report that the people in Bihar came to know that the report has been submitted. This was followed by some stray reports in the media suggesting the submission of the report. Unfortunately, the data on which this report is based are wrong and misleading. This is true for Bihar, it may be true for other states too.

It was reported that the flood affected area of the state had touched a worst ever figure of 49.86 lakh hectares, in 2004. This year’s flood was restricted to 20 districts of north Bihar (barring Siwan and Saran) whose total area is 48.94 LH. The Disaster Management Department of Bihar was continuously mentioning in its reports, till almost the end of August, that 49.86 lakh hectares of land is flooded in north Bihar. This would mean that the flooded area was more than the actual area of the concerned districts. When attention was drawn to this flaw in a local newspaper (Dainik Hindustan, Patna dated 26th August 2004) that the flood affected area of the state suddenly slumped down to 23.49 lakh hectares (Report- Department of Disaster Management, dated 1st September 2004 onwards).

Despite this reduction of the flood affected area, the memorandum submitted to the Central Team by the Bihar State contained the flood affected area of the state as 49.86 lakh hectares and computation of losses and the requests made for relief must have been based on these inflated figures. It is amazing that none of the three concerned departments like the Disaster Management, the Water Resources and the Department of Statistics ever bothered to look into the discrepancy. If the mistake is deliberate, it smacks of conspiracy and if it is a slip, it speaks volumes about the casual way the issues that hit the public are handled in the country from Junior Engineer to Task Force level. Disturbing feature of the entire episode is that the even the Central Team that visited Bihar (starting 13th September 2004) after the floods, did not locate the mistake. The discrepancy went un-noticed in the Prime Minister’s Office too. And now the Task Force also reports the same. Needless to say that the Task Force represents the galaxy of Indian engineers in the field of water.

The report further says that maximum number of 1153 flood deaths in the state occurred in 1993 which again is wrong. The maximum death toll in Bihar was recorded in 1987 when it was put at 1399. Similarly, maximum number of people affected during floods in any year was 286.62 lakhs, again in 1987, and not 24.489 million which the report wants people to believe. Since this has happened with Bihar, there is every reason to believe that it must have happened in case of the other states too. Actually, the entire effort was to highlight the 2004 flood and present the data that suited this purpose.

The report refers to the National  Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) of the UPA Government at more than one occasion. One only hopes that the Government would take notice of the shortcomings of the report and more so when it hopes to get cooperation from the public. The repot talks about the international partners like Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and China etc but does not talk about Interlinking of Rivers. Did UPA formally shunned the Riverlinking Programme and that too  before December 2004.  Or else, the Task Force knows what it should say and what it should avoid.


Dinesh Kumar Mishra
Convenor-Barh Mukti Abhiyan
C-7 Vatika Green City  PO  MGMC
Dimna Road  Jamshedpur  831018
Ph: 0657-2650844  Mob: 09431303360
E-mail  mishrdadk@...

1st June 2005