Bihar Officials Do Not Know The Area Of The State

Bihar has faced unprecedented floods this year and all the fury of floods has remained confined to the northern Gangetic plains of the state.  These plains have an area of 53.798 lakh hectares with a population of 52.3 million people. There are 21 districts in the northern Gangetic plains of Bihar and one Sub-division of the Bhagalpur district, Naugachhia, is also located there, thus bringing the total to 22. Two districts of north Bihar, namely-Siwan and Saran, are not affected by the floods. These districts are facing scarcity of rainfall and agriculture is dwindling because of deficient rainfall.. No floodwater has yet reached the Hardia Chaur (land depression)

The flooded area of northern part of the state (20 districts) is reported to be 49.86 lakh hectares. Siwan and Saran have geographical spread area of 2.219 and 2.641 lakh hectares respectively totaling to 4.860 lakh hectares.  If this area is subtracted from the total area of north Bihar, we are left with 48.94 lakh hetares. The Disaster Management Department of Bihar is continuously telling for past so many days that 49.86 lakh hectares of land is flooded in north Bihar. This would mean that not an inch of the land is left where floodwater has not entered.  This is ridiculous.

The loss data furnished by the department suggest that Darbhanga has a flooded area of 2.41 lakh hectares while its total area is only 2.279 LH. Similar is the case with Madhubani (Affected area 4.240 LH against actual area of 3.501 LH), Saharsa (Affected area 2.120 LH against actual area of the district 1.670 LH.), Supaul (Affected area 15.840 LH against total area of the district 2.447 LH), Araria (Affected area 9.410 LH against total area of the district 2.830 LH), and Khagaria ( Affected area 2.570 LH against total area of 1.486 LH). It is also interesting to note that Kishanganj, Vaishali, Gopalgunj and West Champaran have flooded area less than 10 per cent of the total area of the respective districts.

It is amazing that none of the three concerned departments like the Disaster Management, the Water Resources and the Department of Statistics had ever bothered to look into the discrepancy. Don’t they know the area of the state and the flood prone area of north Bihar? There may be a deliberate attempt to inflate the loss data which nobody has the time to verify but if that is a slip, this is unpardonable.

Dinesh Mishra
Convenor-Barh Mukti Abhiyan
Dated 19th August 2004.