Dr. Dinesh Kumar Mishra

The following reports are from interactions organized in and around the Kosi Basin on the initiative of the Barh Mukti Abhiyan in alliance with local organizations. Reports from the interactions offer an unique window to the continued effect of the Kosi deluge and also the current local concerns in the field.

The Kosi floods in Bihar stunned the world this year. But the real tragedy is that the disaster had been predicted. It was simply waiting to happen. The Kosi embankments were completed in 1963 with a designed life span of 35 years.

Dr. Jagannath Mishra, former Chief Minister of Bihar, has given a pathetic description of floods in Bihar. He said that "Nobody from the government has gone to Saharsa so far. If the people in Saharsa are surviving, they must be saying that we are engulfed in water since ten days and nobody is there to think about us. This is quite worrisome. I will suggest that we must try to look after those surviving there. We must try to save them, whether by boats or a helicopter.. The flood in Saharsa is not a flood, this is unprecedented¦.we cannot call it a flood, it is a deluge." But wait, he is not talking about the recent floods (2008) in Bihar. He was making a speech in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha on the 13th September 1984 about a similar incident that took place on the 5th September 1984 near Navhatta in Saharsa district of north Bihar when the Kosi had breached its embankment at 75th kilometer south of the much talked about Bhimnagar Barrage and come out of the jacket just as it happened at Kusaha this year. Obviously, the powers that be refuse to take any lessons from the past mistakes and their executive wing, the Water Resources Department, is immune to any criticism and learning. The 1984 incident had uprooted nearly half a million people from their homes and hearths and engulfed 96 villages spread over 7 blocks of Saharsa and Supaul districts then. They could return to their homes only after the Holi festival in March 1985.