With the monsoon rainfall in its full swing and water levels soaring in the rivers, the floods in Bihar which have become an annual affair now, have yet again disrupted the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people in the state. In Gaon Connection’s ‘Gaon Cafe’ programme, Eklavya Prasad, an activist working on issues related to water distress explains about the root of the crisis.

In an interaction with Nidhi Jamwal, Deputy Managing Editor, Gaon Connection — India’s biggest rural media platform, Prasad who represents Megh Pyne Abhiyan —a public charitable trust that works on issues of water distress in the states of Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand, explained that structural intervention along the floodplains have actually lend the floods a destructive character.

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“Building embankments along the river have reduced the water holding capacities of the rivers in the region. We are structurally not allowing the river to expand when the water levels increase. So basically, a smaller portion of the river along which the population resides is getting excessively high levels of water thereby causing disruption of lives across its banks,” Prasad told Gaon Connection.

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Flood situation in Bihar

An alert was issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for both Paschim and Purba Champaran districts for July 2. Several villages in Ramnagar block of the Pashchim Champaran district had been evacuated, in anticipation of another devastating flood after the recent floods of June 29 and 30, that had washed away the piles of bamboo on the banks that were placed there to act as a buffer from flood waters entering the villages.

Heavy rainfall in Bihar and the neighbouring country of Nepal has led to flash floods in villages along the India-Nepal border in Paschim Champaran.   

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The Masan and Pandai rivers are wreaking havoc in nearby villages, washing away everything in their way. Both are transboundary rivers and tributaries of the Gandak. They have been in full spate for the past week.