Every one in India now knows Kosi river in Bihar. Now we call it as sorrow of Bihar. in 2007 48 laks people are affected by flood, in 2008 35 lakh people are affected. Is this river really a daemon? Is this problems are natural disaster or man made?
Kosi is flowing for several million years. It is a land building river. It brings silt from Himalaya and deposits on its banls. Villagers in the Northern Bihar says that “Ye hamari ma hai. Ma kabhi kbi naraz ho jaththe hai” (its their mother, and mother sometimes become angree).
All old colonial report says that the area arround Kosi is a prosperous area. Kosi brings silt from Himalaya and make the land fertile. All the problem started with the embankments of the river. The embankment on Kosi restricted its land building role.
In the colonial time the Britishers are more intelligent and friendly to environemnt than the political leaders of post independant India. in 1854 British built a dam in Damodar river and they dimolished 32 km long embankment on 1869. Becuase British realised that instead of controlling floods the embankments are submerging the fertile land. And they have to give componsation to the farmers. There are records show that British gave Rs 60,000 to a farmer 1896. The idea of British is to generate revenue from the land. When they tried to built a dam or canal for irrigation or embankment of river the purpose was to collect more revenue and take that to Briton. The moment when they realized that revenue generation has problem because these areas are getting water logged and the farmer has to be compensated to this because it happened because of state’s intervention, they demolished those contructions.
Poverty of the poeple of that region started from the embankment. In 1954 embankment started. Independent govornement on 1950s did not learned the lessions from Britishers who embanked Damodar river. Britishers realized the embankment and dam not good, so they dimolished them. During 1950s Govt asked the engineers and irrigation minister to go Hwang Ho and study the dam and its embankments. Actually Hwang Ho breached 1500 times by that time. For each of this breach a new channel was born and Chineese built a new embankment there everytime and said everything is OK. But it never works. Every time it makes problems. Engineers and minister actually mislead the political heads. Political leaders also like to take advantage of big embankment construction.
In the last 54 years Kosi flooded 8 times. Floods in 50s lasted for 4 days and gradually its duration has increased to almost 8 months in a year. This is contrary to the general belief that flood as a disaster is for a shorter duration.
People are living in that place for centuries. living with floods. They are choosed to vlive with floods and live with embankments. Govt choose that they have to live with embankments. These embankments are cosistently breaking every 6 years. Average life time of an embankments is 25 years. Political parties are playing a double stand. One major political party in Delhi said that we have to learn from Damodar experience. But the same political paty in Bihar proposing Kosi high dam.
in 2007 48 laks affected, in 2008 35 lakh people affected. Govt spent Rs 1000 crore ruppies on relief. Why Gvt is building dams and embankments? is it becuase of contractors, corrupt polition, beurocrats, making money out of that and completely forgetting the human cost of the dam and the environmental damage that it couse. The greed of a few creating damage to so many people.
For Kosi no one is addressing the core problem. For engineers Kosi look like a river carrying water. But Kosi carries silt with itself. Kosi carries arround 90 to 95 million cubic meters of sediments every year. in the 33 km of embanked Kosi if we move the accumulated mud we can build an one meter by one meter wall running across the equator thrice. That is amount of silt it carries.
There are 380 villages On this embankments. they are there for last 50 years. In that 54 years they are flooded 42 times. No one talk about them. As per govt papers they are not supposed to be there. There was no rehabitation for the people living near to embankments. So they are living there for decades. There are one million people. Every time they get affected by floods nothing happens. But when the flooding goes beyind these places that will catch big media attention.
In planing, design, constructing lower level of poeple are not get involved. The people on top technocrats, beurocrats they decide what is good for poeple. So te mistakes are repeated. There is no accountability on the engineers, technocrats, beurocrats and polititions making these mistakes. They are repeating it over and over again. Politions and beurocrats are benefeciaries in 2 ways. They gets a share of the money for constructing the embankments and dams. Also they share of money that used for releafe and rehabilitation.
Polition in Bihar now not defending embankments. The reason is that they want to debunk it and build Kosi high dam. Actually the Kosi high dam will make situation worse. They says that it is a multi purpose high dam. It will produce electricity, controlls floods, provides irrigation. Actually these 3 are contradictory in nature. The irrigation will not work with the efficiency in which it is designed. Irrigation results in water logging.
35 lakh People who affected by the flood are looking for some political assurance or statements. One of the assurance that can be given as a deal/deam is that there willl be a Kosi high dam. Even if we accept this dam, how many years will it take to build? it will take 20 year to build and cost of it will be 50,000 crore ruppies. It is estimated cost. What will be the actual cost? What is the life of the dam? 37 years (govt figure). It is ridiculas to go for a high dam.
What is the way forward:
No big dams.
Change the mindset that floods are a problem. But man mande floods are problem.
If floods are then the drought also a problem.
The reality is that nature choose some area as drought area. There people are living these areas for centuries on these areas without any trouble. Rivers originating from the same point have taken different route. Instead of linking them why its not flowing as one river? we should not interfere
Unlike earth quake, tsunami, tyfoon, which we cannot anticipate we know very well that this is the time of the year we expect the river will flood. We can take advance action to migate damage. July-August it will flood.
For Rhine river in Netherlands the engineers are working for a concept called “the Room for the River” (RvR). Detch engineers are working for this. Rivers are dynamic it is not stable.
Kosi is the most voilent river in the world. All problems started with embankments and dams. So lets undo the Dam. No Kosi high dam
– from Loksabha TV. Discussion: Sudhirendra Sharma, Gopalkrishna, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Rulers are only interested big projects double gain they are getting. One for builing the project another for relief operation. Same is true for the proposed Setu Samudra project in Tamilnadu. That place actually hepled to reduce the calamities of Tsunami
It is easy to blame people in hindsight, the summary is, it was considered possible to tame a river, now the empirical evidence has proven otherwise, so let’s act accordingly. No point in blaming and ascribing wrong motives to the earlier politicians (usually the easiest thing to do), it was the colletive wisdom of those days to build huge dams.
Lets assume that it was a collective wisdom of that time. but what about the current scenario? are they ready to undo the problem? Today we know that embanking is wrong. Still they are going for even bigger dam. Why?
British people build an embankment at Damodar river for farmers. Soon they realized that its not helping the farmers the demolished it. So how can you say that embankments are collective wisdom? Shame on you.
Ok Its happened. But Why they did not verified the result of the embankment, whether it is helping the farmers/people there or not, in its first decade? Still the environmental study of the embankment is not done.
Before they started the work, an expert commity went to Hwang Ho to study the situation there. Hwang Ho embankment breached 1500 times after it was built. All those time a new channel will be formed and there a new embankment was built. So why our expert commity did not asked question what will be result of this breach? In last 50 years Kosi flooded 42 times.
This water logging in that region is a big issue. Women, children, old people all poor poeple are sufferening for this issue. The region was once fertile. How can a state like Bihar where 16% of its land waterlogged throughout the year for last 5 decades? Why sonepur has the longest railway station? Its for a goods train to stand their and do help people affected by the flood. These are the people who migrate to places like Mumbai, Delhi, assam and there they are rediculed in. Its so sad.
From all these its clear that people who built it know that whats going to happen. But they dont care.
For ruling class, there is an affinity towards big projects. Now also they did not changed their attitude. Let the people decide what good for them. Not the technocrat.