Click to play videoThe Central and Bihar governments should have seen the havoc caused by Kosi coming.
When the river breached the embankment at Kusaha on April 18, it was flowing at around 1.5 lakh cusecs—far below the 9.5 lakh cusecs the embankment was built to withstand. Massive silt deposits on the riverbed raised the water level and turned the river towards the northeastern plains.
“It was sheer lack of maintenance and there was enough time because in February a technical advisory committee makes inspections and recommendations. Estimates are made and tenders are floated, so there was enough time,” says Dinesh Mishra, convener of Barh Mukti Abhiyan.
In 2006, two senior officials of the Union Ministry of Water Resources had warned the Bihar government, saying: "At present the pond of the barrage at Hanumannagar is full of sediments. Soon the embankments would be ineffective to control the floods."
In June, field officers of the state government asked the Kosi High-Level Commission for Rs 35 lakh to repair damage to the embankment. They received only Rs 4 lakh.
The Ganga Flood Control Committee, a central body, asked the state government thrice about its flood protection measures. It was ignored all three times. Ground reports from as early as August 5 warned that the embankment could break anytime. But until August 17, the Bihar government insisted in daily bulletins to the Central Water Commission that all was well.
Nine days before the breach, E Satyanarayan, the Chief Engineer of the Kosi project, warned authorities in Nepal that the embankment was under threat. Satyanarayan says he sent desperate telegrams to 11 senior flood management officials in Patna on August 16. But no action was taken.
Many experts believe the embankments are part of the problem. They say a river like the Kosi, whose water carrying capacity during monsoon is 40 times more than the usual days, cannot be tamed with embankments.
“In 1952 we had 160 km of embankments and the flood-prone area was almost 2.6 million hectares. Now it is 3,000 odd km of embankments and the flood-prone area has gone up to 6.8 million hectares,” says environment activist Eklavya Prasad.
The Kosi treaty says that India is responsible for maintaining all embankments, even those in Nepalese territory. Water experts say the flood clearly points to a failure of the state government.
And the worst may not be over. If the breach at Kusaha is not repaired in the next three weeks, a spell of heavy rain traditionally expected in October may lead to another catastrophe. “Repairing the breach is a must and if it is not done, then the danger is the new course of Kosi will turn into permanent. That is why this course of action of repairing the breach, diverting the Kosi river to its original form is a must,” says S C Jha, chairperson of the Special Task Force on Bihar.
Come October, they may have to relive their miseries if the state government does not act decisively. Bihar's crisis is clearly not over yet.
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