Keeping A River Alive

By Surekha Sule on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - 11:52

Surekha Sule makes a visit to the banks of the River Kosi in Bihar to find that the mighty river is being reined in much like the patriarchal society ties down an independent woman. She recounts the horrors of the floods and the troubles women have to go through.

River Kosi is known as ‘Sorrow of Bihar’. In India, a river is revered as mother, which nurtures humanity and all living beings in her basin. River Kosi too did the same till 1960s when it flowed through about 15 channels meandering over a 160 km tract over 250 years. People then knew how to live with Kosi floods which actually helped agriculture. In 1950s, India’s technocrats decided to ‘tame’ the mighty river in its westernmost 8-16 km channel by constructing embankments on either side. Unable to contain its heavy flood waters within such a narrow channel during May-June to September-October, the river tries to break free of artificial shackles and breaches the embankments causing untold misery to the people. So far there have been seven major breaches - the most memorable one being the 2008 Kusaha breach that deluged entire north Bihar.

Over the last 50 years, Dr Dinesh Kumar Mishra, a civil engineer and an expert on rivers in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, has been raising the issue of wrong technological solution in the name of flood control. Through Barh Mukti Abhiyan, Dr Mishra has been organizing Kosi Yatra for groups of journalists, activists and thinkers to see for themselves what he has been highlighting through studies, papers and writings. Says Dr Mishra, “The technocratic solution offered way back in 1955-62 to embank Kosi and still being pursued by our engineers has a certain male chauvinistic view of taming a powerful river.” Women may be able to understand better the ills of such controls and hence a group of women journalists were invited to Kosi Yatra in March 2010. The taming of the river is seen as akin to a strong woman being restricted in her pursuit of self-realisation by chauvinistic patriarchal controls and when forced back to the wall, she is unable to take on the pressures and tries to break free. Then the conventional society defames her as wicked or promiscuous. Kosi – the nurturing mother river - has been disgraced just the same way by the chauvinistic technocrats and the politicians and is labeled as ‘Sorrow of Bihar’.
 

Kosi, which originates in the Everest and brings heavy silt along with tremendous water discharge, has to flow through a constrained path. Its riverbed has risen up to 15 feet due to silt deposition and now actually flows at a level several feet higher than the level outside the embankments making breaches even more dangerous.

Major breaches

The Kosi embankment breach at Kusaha in Nepal on August 18, 2008 transformed a huge area in 16 districts of north Bihar into a watery grave. Some 35 lakh people in about 1700 villages were marooned in flood water which not only destroyed standing crops in over 1 lakh hectare farm land but rendered it infertile due to heavy sand silt left behind. Around 9 lakh persons were rescued and put in over 200 camps but lakhs of people remained stranded without relief for months. Over 3 lakh houses were destroyed and even after two years, the scenes of collapsed houses, washed away roads and bridges bear testimony to the horror unleashed by the floods.

Right since it was ‘controlled’ in a narrow channel, the mighty River Kosi has been warning of such retaliation, as she has been ‘driven to the wall’ and has no way but to force herself out on the very humanity she nurtures.

Thus, the major embankment breaches were in Dalwa (Nepal) in 1963, Jamalpur in 1968, Bhatania in 1971, Bahuarawa in 1980, Hempur in 1984, and Jognia (Nepal) in 1991. There are many vulnerable points on the 125 km long Kosi embankments that can breach anytime. After the 2008 breach, the official ‘solution’ has been to raise the embankment height from 7 feet to 15 feet which can spell even bigger disaster since far more water will spill out with demonic flow drowning everything in its spate.

Trapped within embankments

The embankments trap a population of over 12 lakhs 380 villages within a 8-16 km wide stretch. Back in sixties, these people were to be resettled but still have not been. They were given land for houses but not for farming. Even the resettlements got flooded forcing them back to the original villages within the embankments. They take refuge on the embankments during monsoon when the river swells swallowing their villages. For those who live in huts on elevations, life is miserable for four months as there is water all around, cutting them off completely.

Women suffer the most. Life is very hard with no toilets. Imagine a 100-200 sq ft table top kind of area around the hut and then water all around. They are forced to relieve themselves in the flood water. Women die on the way to the hospital for delivery since the boats cannot be rowed if the river is spate. If ill, men, women and children die similar death on the way to the hospital outside the embankment. There is also the danger of dying of snake bites or drowning accidentally.

Have embankments provided protection to the people living outside them? It has not because the rain water outside embankments finds no drainage into the main river and accumulates and no farming is possible. The water seeps into areas adjacent to the embankments which get waterlogged with deadly hyacinth growing on vast stretches. Breaches cause water logging and sand deposition. And people live in constant fear of breaches.

Outcry to no avail

People inside and outside have been suffering for the last five decades and protesting but to no avail. The government undertakes relief every year which provides the vested interests one more avenue to siphon off the public funds! Now, the heightening of the embankments too suits the politicians-contractors lobby!

Dr Mishra keeps the issue alive through his studies and writings and suggests that a mighty river like Kosi should not be tied down in such a small channel that cannot contain all its flow. Instead it should be allowed to flow through all or some of its 15 old channels spread across 160 km width. A scholar of Ved Shashtra, Dr Mishra describes rivers in many ways. One description is in terms of braided and unbraided hair. In her course, a river may split into various channels to join again, again split and join and so on in a braided pattern. Such a river is called ‘Baddh Veni’. If she splits into many channels and never meet again i.e. spread out like hair let loose, it is called ‘Mukt Veni’. So Dr Mishra says, "Let Kosi flow like Mukt Veni which will spread her water on a vast area allowing her to nurture the land, resources and humanity rather than forcing her to engulf them out of sheer distress of containing within a narrow Baddh Veni pattern." Mukt Veni symbolizes emancipation.

Surekha Sule is a development journalist and mainly writes on environment, water, gender and rural issues. She was a Senior Fellow at National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad and Media Fellow of Union Ministry of Water Resources.