Rural Water

A crowd of people jostling by the ticket counter at Jhansi railway station in Uttar Pradesh; men and women, some with families in tow, boarding trains to Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai and other big cities. These are common sights during the summer months at Jhansi, a major town and railway junction.

Monsoon 2020: Countrywide deficit of 10 percent in July; September may have heavy rains

National Water Mission’s (NWM) has launched a campaign ‘Catch the rain’ on a pan India basis to nudge the states and stakeholders to create appropriate rainwater harvesting structures (RWHS) suitable to the climatic conditions and sub-soil strata before the onset of monsoon.

Groundwater fulfills the drinking water requirements of nearly 85% and 50% of the rural and urban Indian population, respectively. 65% of the total irrigated area utilizes groundwater. It also caters to the water needs of the industrial sector in India.

Two weeks ago, the Kanakai River flowing through Kishanganj rendered dozens of families homeless. While the people in the region are staying under plastic sheds, the government has turned a blind eye to their plight.

Mohammadin is also one of them. He tells the India Water Portal,

Flood havoc continues to increase in Bihar. Until recently, the effect of flood was only in eight districts across the state but now it has spread to ten districts.

Flood waters inundated the house of Ramchandra Yadav, a resident of Khoknaha village of Supaul, for three days. During these days he cooked food by setting up a brigade on the outpost and spent nights at the same post.

Flood batters three northeast states, Assam worst affected

The annual floods that wreak havoc in Bihar have knocked the state this year as well. So far, the flood waters have entered 150 panchayats of 30 blocks across eight districts, namely Sitamarhi, Shivhar, Supaul, Kishanganj, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj and East Champaran  .

An official of Bihar's Disaster Management Department said,

Due to intermittent rains in the Terai region of Bihar and Nepal, the water level of Mahananda, Kosi, Kamla and Bagmati rivers of North Bihar is continuously increasing and flood conditions have started to build in the region.