First hand report on the Bihar flood zone 2008

Priya Ranjan, recently visited the flood hit areas in Bihar recently and found that things were really sad and pathetic. Mushhar communities were surviving on snails and grass-seeds. It is really hard to describe the grim situation in words, reports from the visit are accessible here: Flood zone situation

Mr. Zakaria a research scholar at JNU writes in with his personal experience from the flood zone. The following is an open letter from Mr. Zakaria describing the conditions & appealing for aid.

Zakaria's account

Now it is going to be five months since Bihar was hit by floods. We left Delhi on the 30th of November to travel to the flood affected area and spent 8 days in the flood affected villages. The situation is still quite gruesome and the amount of relief work needed is grossly inadequate in comparison to what is reaching there through different organisations. As the area has no possibility of agriculture there is no employment opportunity. Government could have initiated massive public works programme as there is huge scope due to the devastation in the flood but has not done so. Wide spread corruption in government relief programme is excluding weaker individuals and families from getting the benefits of the programme. We tried our best to reach those excluded.

Our experiences are much wider than we could express through this report. The individual accounts of losing their dear ones, houses, cattle, food grains etc was deeply heartening. We would request please see the pictures at The stories of neglect and delays by government officials and representatives are endless. We have tried to summarize all these experiences in the report.

I would like thank all those people who supported this third trip of JNUSU's relief programme, particularly to the organizers of Charity dinner at The Hague, The Netherlands -- Mrs. Rajani, Mrs Abha and Mrs. Sanila and Contribution from Hyderabad were organised Priyesh Suman. Priyesh was also with us during our journey.

Please visit for pictures from the flood affected villages and also my blog  for updates and previous reports of JNUSU relief efforts.

Thank you for supporting so many people who otherwise would have remained helpless.