I came to Delhi In May and some weeks later I heard the news of a slab of the flyover near Janakpuri District center getting collapsed. This flyover was constructed barely 6 years ago and now it is closed for public under the pretense of construction again. The tragedy is that no signs of renovation are visible to the naked eye. This is the plight of a relatively new construction but there also are several railway and road bridges, dams etc across the country, which are very old and have completed their life span. But the concerned authorities don’t care to dismantle the old structure or replace it with a new one. Every now and then we come across news of falling bridges and buildings, but no one bothers about the casualty. And then something like flooding in Bihar takes place and shakes the nation out of oblivion again. Kosi, which is notoriously known as the “sorrow of Bihar” has devastated 16 districts of the state. More than 3 million people have been affected by the floods and around a hundred lives have been washed away with water. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has announced a Rs 1000-crore relief package for the state. Other states of the country are also offering relief packages to Bihar. Though all possible steps are being taken to provide relief to the grief and calamity stricken state but still people in most affected areas are complaining of not getting adequate relief materials. Rescue and relief operations are going on in Bihar, but it would succeed only when the flood waters recede.
When I picture people rowing boats in small by lanes or a few dead carcasses of cattle and men floating in water, it sends shivers down my spine. This time the disaster which struck Bihar could definitely have been avoided, had the government taken necessary steps beforehand.
The reason behind the floods in Bihar was due to breach on Kosi river barrage on the Indo - Nepal border. According to a senior official of National Disaster Management, the barrage completed its estimated lifespan of 30 years way back in 1986. Since then, 22 years have passed, but neither the state government nor the Centre showed any interest in constructing a new barrage or renovating the old one. Over the last 250 years, the Kosi River has shifted its course over 120 kilometres (75 mi) from east to west and the unstable nature of the river is attributed to the heavy silt which it carries during the monsoon season. A small breach had developed on the eastern side on August 18. But neither the government of Nepal nor India thought it was a matter of immediate attention and remained silent. Had the breach been repaired earlier, Bihar could have been saved from this man-made disaster.
The problem with our government is that it wakes up to spring into action only when a calamity has already destroyed everything. We choose these people to be our leaders because we trust them with our lives. We have confidence that they will work towards our betterment and development as promised by them in their long endless speeches they make at the time of elections. Why is it so difficult for our government to act in advance so that we as a nation can at least start crawling out of the ‘developing country’ league?
The disater which has overtaken Bihar was in the making for several years, if not in decades. Any one who travels along the Kosi eastern and the western embankments, total approx 290 km, from Bhimnagar (Nepal) to Koparia (Bihar) and Bhardah(Nepal) to Ghonghepur (Bihar),will be shocked and surprised at the dilapidated condition of the ‘life saving/ protective’barriers between the swirling Kosi in spate and lacs of hectares of the urbanand rural area, with the poverty stricken highest population density human habitat. This time the river breached the eastern afflux embankment 12.9km upstream of the barrage at Bhimnagar, at less than 25% of the design discharge, repeating the sordid history,at the least count sixth time, exposing the professional incompetence, apathy to serious work of tending the riverand understanding her rhythm and analysing the complex distress signal (S), and ignoble lapses in administering an international contract, of such a vital importance and having such a far and wide repurcussions. Only a public enquiry can bring out the truth, fix the responsibility for the disater which has brought one of the greatest human tragedies of the of the cotemporary history and set the development clock back for this improvished region at least by fifty years.