Bihar Flood - The National Disaster
Field report by Oliver, AID INDIA, Chennai

Before flood - This agricultural land	Now has become a fishing land

My observations during Bihar visit

It was my first visit to Bihar. I reached Saharsa on 22nd Sep with two volunteers from Chennai. I saw hundreds of families sheltered on the railway platforms. Hundreds of children were seen without dress. We went to our flood relief center which was about 1 km from the railway station. We met Dharmendra of AID Bihar and refreshed ourselves and started our relief work. We went back to Saharsa railway station with medicines to put a medical camp. Kosi People’s Relief Committee was known to be the first to put a medical camp in Saharsa railway station to help the people who were houseless due to flood. AID India medical team set up their camp for two days headed by Dr.Sailakshmi (of CIOSA) specialist in Pediatric. Many people were screened by Dr.Sai, especially women and children. This medical team visited many villages thereby reaching service to thousands of families.

My field visits with Rajesh and Greg

Mr. Greg Bentley from California volunteered AID Bihar for two weeks. He came on 30th Sep and the same day we went to Tirveniganj block of Supaul district. We met Rajesh (former mukhia of Koriapatti Panchayat), a young and brave person always involving himself in social services activities and now he was was volunteering with AID Bihar. He is the person in charge carrying out our relief work in Supaul district keeping Tirveniganj block as the base.

Village visit

On 30th September evening, we went to Dhoparka village. There we met villagers and visited some of their damaged homes. We saw many electrical posts, and underground telephone cables were broken & damaged. Pucca roads were fully damaged and seen like kutcha roads as it was cut off into pieces.

1st October

around 7 am we were travelling towards Prathapganj block in a jeep. We reached a place called Pipra were our vehicle caught in a huge traffic jam. We planned to take diversion, but we were interested to know the reason for early morning traffic. It was on NH 107, where people residing in one of the relief camp run by government in Pipra higher secondary school went on a road strike against the government. We just peeped into the closed circle and it was Rajesh who shocked to see and hear that a lady from his own village was forced to sexual abuse by a group of home guard (police) person on the previous night. And her husband and brother lying on the centre of the road were severely beaten up by the police for complaining the incident at a nearby police station. It was the fourth incident in the same week in the same camp, where women were sexually abused by police person and no action was taken by the police even after complaining. We visited the camp site and studied the situation. Rajesh immediately informed the situation to DM, SP, local radio channel and few news agents. It was around 11’o’ clock, we took diversion and started moving towards Prathapganj. The traffic jam was on a long stretch for more than 2kms and people going to distance places like Kathmandu (Nepal) suffered and had to wait until the traffic was cleared. Rajesh followed the situation every now and then and helped the victims to get justice. Next day almost all the newspapers carried the front page story on the strike news stating that the three accused were suspended from job and kept under judicial custody.

The lifelines

We went to Dwania & Gandsai villages in Prathapganj block and Kataiya & Banellipatti village in Basanthpur block. All these villages were heavily damaged, thousands of families have displaced to other place. People lost their homes, agricultural land and cattle. Many villages are still out of reach which are like islands, cut off from transport & communication. Even the state government has not reached till date in many villages.

Kosi in new course

It was around 1:30 pm in Basanthpur block. We were in a place called 22RD bridge for field visit, 12 km closer to Nepal border. We planned to visit the broken embankment by Kosi River in Nepal.

Finally, we reached India-Nepal border by passing through Bhimnagar village which touches the Nepal border. Our flood relief banner tied on the vehicle was our passport. We travelled 12 km from the border towards the broken embankment in Nepal. We were asked to stop our vehicle before 2 km as the reconstruction work of river bank was on process. We reached the spot at 3pm and interacted with Nepal Army men, boatmen and construction worker. We came to know that the river bank broke on 8th August 2008 to 150 mts and was left unattended, which was in need of immediate repair / blockage. Currently it has widened to at least 1.85 km.

The scene behind the left picture is the actual spot where the Kosi broke river enbankment and formed a new course on the right side. Usuallly it turns to left side, which enters Bihar through Kosi Barrage.

The atual path of the river Kosi is seen dry now