"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," said Jagannath Mishra, former Chief Minister of Bihar. But he was not talking about the floods of August 2008 in Bihar. He was making a speech in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha on 13 September 1984 about a similar incident that took place on the 5 September 1984 near Navhatta in Saharsa district of north Bihar when the Kosi had breached its embankment 75 km south of the much-talked about Bhimnagar Barrage just as it happened at Kusaha this year. Obviously, the powers-that-be refuse to learn from past mistakes and their executive wing, the Water Resources Department, is immune to any criticism. The 1984 incident had uprooted nearly half a million people from their homes and hearths and engulfed 96 villages spread over seven blocks in Saharsa and Supaul districts. They could return to their homes only after the Holi festival in March 1985.
The Kosi embankment (locally called the eastern afflux bund) was breached near the Kusaha village in Nepal, turning four Panchayats of Nepal into a watery grave. These Panchayats are Western Kusaha, Sripur, Haripur and Laukahi with a population of nearly 35,000. Counting the number of villages trapped in floodwaters in Bihar continues. Supaul, Saharsa, Araria, Purnea, Katihar, and Khagaria had to bear the brunt of the unexpected floods. According to official sources nearly 35 lakh people have been hit by the floods in these districts. Nearly three lakh people have been evacuated from the engulfed areas. Relief operations are reported to be picking up for the survivors and so are the rescue operations. Unless marooned people are reached, relief operations carry little meaning. The relief that is reaching the people is not adequate as they were already braving the floods for about a fortnight without any external assistance.
The blame game and mud slinging that is so common after such accidents are going on in full swing. Many leaders of opposition have blamed the Government of Bihar for the breach, while the ministers are calling the breach a natural calamity and that the river is now trying to flow eastwards. It must be mentioned here that that the Kosi embankments have breached thrice on its western side and each time it was suggested that the river is trying to flow the west. The Kosi embankments were built in the late 1950s and according to the agreement with Nepal, the responsibility of maintaining these embankments was vested in the Government of Bihar. Let us glance through the earlier breaches in the Kosi embankment.
Breaches in the past
The first breach occurred on the western embankment in Nepal in 1963 near the village Dalwa. Binodanand Jha of the Congress Party was the chief minister and the responsibility of the breach was passed on to rats and foxes that dig holes in the body of the embankments through which water seeps and the embankment collapses. The other reason mentioned for the breach was that because of bad road conditions, stones for construction could not arrive at the site. In this connection, a meeting of the Irrigation Minister of Bihar, Dip Narayan Singh, the Panchayat Minister of Nepal, Kharag Bahadur Singh and the Irrigation Minister of Nepal, Nageshwar Prasad Singh was held at the Kosi Project headquarters at Birpur on 22 August, 1963. The Nepali side offered to extend all cooperation in undertaking any long term programme to tame the Kosi. They also indicated that should a need arise for rehabilitation of the people in a similar situation, then its responsibility should be taken by the Government of India. Then came the breach of 1968 at five places in Jamalpur in Darbhanga District. This was caused due to the highest flow of 913,000 cusecs ever recorded in the river but an enquiry held by the Chief Engineer (Floods) of CWC, P N Kumra revealed that the failure was once again caused by the rats and foxes. The state was then under the Presidents Rule then.