The midnight of 28 September marked the onset of yet another largely man-made disaster in Bihar. The Kosi embankment near Bhubhaul village of Kiratpur block of Darbhanga broke down on that fateful night and literally opened the floodgates. In no time at least eight villages - Tatwara, Tetri, Jagso, Bhubhaul, Jamalpur, Narkatia, Musaharia, Khaisa - came under water. Hundreds of huts and even pucca houses bore the brunt of the fury of the second major Koshi flood since 2007.
On October 6, 2024, a high-level CPIML team led by General Secretary Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya, and CPIML leaders Comrades Dhirendra Jha, Sandeep Saurav, Shashi Yadav, Santosh Sahar, Kumar Parvez, Vaidyanath Yadav, Niyaz Ahmed, Dhruv Narayan Karn, Abhishek Kumar and several leading activists from Darbhanga, Madhubani and Saharsa visited the flood affected area.
Addressing the media, Comrade Dipankar said that the pain and anger were writ large on every face in the area. “We could see some belated effort to erect a temporary embankment with bags filled with soil and sand. The people were angry as to why the administration failed to do anything that night when the locals were fighting the flood risking their lives. Had there been regular maintenance of the embankment and even some prompt response when the embankment broke down, the disaster could have been contained,” add Com. Dipankar.
The team found that the only sign of government relief - banners of a medical camp and a community kitchen - was at Gondal chowk on Saharsa-Darbhanga border, some six kilometres away from the site of the broken embankment and road connector. In the name of shelter, there were makeshift tarpaulin tents on both sides of the Gondaul-Bhubhaul stretch of the surviving road without any supply of power at night. The ongoing relief campaign that the team witnessed was almost entirely by various local organisations and charity initiatives. A few NDRF boats could be seen at a distance, for the first time in a week according to the local people, but for rescue purposes people have to rely only on private boats.
Local resident Mohan Sau told the team how he had to arrange for private boats to bring the bodies of his dead brother Vinod Sau and his wife Draupadi Devi. Another resident Neero Devi was frantically looking for some boats to rescue her cattles. The team also spoke to the nearest police station on the road, Jamalpur PS, for help. Comrade Shashi Yadav, CPIML MLC contacted Darbhanga DM over phone for arranging lights, community kitchen, medical care and government boats.
All the people the team spoke to were terribly angry that no minister or local MLA or MP cared to visit them. The CM was driven away from the National Highway at Punach Chowk, quite a few kilometres away from even Gondaul.
Comrade Dipankar, speaking on the government support said that “rescue and relief are clearly no priority for the much-advertised double engine Modi-Nitish government. Not to talk of any concern for rehabilitation of the flood-evicted people most of whom have no place of their own to go back to. And is the double-engine dispensation even aware of the threat of the Koshi changing its course yet again and the devastation that would entail? But if you expected the Bihar government to take up flood-fighting on a war footing, you could not be more mistaken. The CM and his party are busy drawing plans to win the 2025 polls with a 225-plus majority in an assembly of 243!”
The Kosi is not the only river flooding Bihar at the moment. Gandak, Bagmati, Ganga, all these major rivers have inundated large parts of Bihar, evicting people, damaging crops, destroying livelihood in district after district.
As the Nitish-BJP government abdicated all its responsibility and failed the people, CPIML and its mass organisations are standing with the people to organise relief and hold the government accountable. Comrades of AISA and RYA and local party organisations in flood-affected districts have all joined the relief effort.
The CPIML has demanded that government to initiate immediate relief operations, including:
- Provide electricity to people temporarily staying on embankments in flood-affected areas.
- Arrange adequate government boats every 1 km.
- Set up sufficient community kitchens and medical services with necessary medicines.
- Ensure availability of sturdy plastic sheets, clean water, and toilets.
- Provide fodder for cattle.
- Take action against negligent officials.
Furthermore, the team noted several long-term support and planning strategies are required to deal with the suffering of the people and mitigate the disastrous situation. These includes:
1. Guarantee permanent housing for all victims.
2. Strengthen and raise the Koshi's western embankment with boulders.
3. Form an expert team to study Koshi’s course changes.
4. Review the Bagmati project.