Click to play videoGorakhpur, UP:The flood in Uttar Pradesh is creating new kind of refugees. Farmers are losing land to rising rivers and relief is reaching only after deaths are reported.
According to the district administration the flood in Gorakhpur, a city in the eastern UP, is over. In marooned Kolkhas a swollen river is rising and there is a mass of water where there was land a few days ago. Acres of rice plants have submerged and as this year's crop has succumbed to the rising water the coming year is also lost.
The floods have come and gone but this year Saryu changed its course and is slowly swallowing Kolkhas and villagers are calling it katan ( the boat that cuts through the water showing the speed)
“This year’s flood has taken away our entire farming land. I have lost 10-hectare of land and my house. And now after destroying my house I am leaving on the street with my family,” says a farmer Balwant Kumar.
The farmers themselves are destroying their houses with a hope that they might rebuild it again. They are also chopping down trees for cooking food.
These farmers have lost their ancestral land forever.
“We will live on the road, what can we do? We have spent our entire life in this village,”says another farmer Mahesh.
The boatmen involved in the rescue operation has to make repeat visits to the village to carry the animal feed, the ailing animals, the women and children. Only the men are taking the risk of staying back in the night. Though these villagers have lived by the river for ages but now they don’t know its ways.
Villagers are trying to salvage every brick in their wall, every grain of food to rebuild their future lives because the flood water is rising dangerously. One upper-caste basti has survived so far because it is at a higher level.
Water might discriminate, but death does not. Some survived the fury of the flood only to surrender themselves to diarrhea. The officers and medicines then followed. This basti has already lost two lives. Chouthi was the first to die.
“He vomited once. We were taking him to the hospital took by boat but he died in the boat on the way,” says grandson of Chouthi Ashok Kumar.
Sudha is silent like a stone because she lost her first born, three-year-old Rishu. The hospital was one swollen river away and it was too late to save her son.
“People came only after the death of my son. Whom should I blame? I blame god,” says Sudha.
None of these families have got any compensation. Managing flood is primarily about polythene sheets, match boxes, a few kilos of foodgrains. There is little hope for adequate compensation for loss of crop, cattle and none for loss of land. And, even if there was money, there is dalali.
Gorakhpur is not new to floods and even this year, it might be again hit by floods. Families are already on the verge of starvation and many are on the roads.
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