He had just got back to work as a labourer in Punjab two weeks before, from his village in Boda, in Kishanpur in Supaul district of Bihar, when Ramanand Rai got a frantic call from his family asking him to return as the Kosi river was fast eroding its banks and his family of five children and a wife were in danger. “I had to come back to relocate them to a safer place. I ended up spending more money on my journey to and from Punjab than what I had earned there,” Rai told Gaon Connection. 

Earlier in February, Rai had returned home for a break when the pandemic struck and he was stuck at home with no source of income, for more than eight months.  Rai began to incur debts and when he owed nearly Rs 30,000 with a monthly interest of five per cent, he decided it was time to head back to Punjab, pandemic or no pandemic, and start working again. However, that was not to be and barely two weeks into his work, the SOS call from his village took him back to his village.   

Rai’s  land was washed away by the Kosi, and while his family is relocated, he will soon have to take a loan again to buy land and rebuild a home. There is no way he can even think of returning to work. And finding work in his village is out of question as there are jobs available there. By the time he leaves back for Punjab, he will be staggering under a huge debt again, he knows. 

Hundreds of migrant workers like Rai are looking at a bleak future as the Kosi is wreaking havoc in their lives. 

Amidst the watery ruins of Dulari Devi’s home, the remnants of her puja corner and kitchen are still visible. “How can I dismantle my puja corner,” she asked. Along with her children, Dulari is preparing to leave behind her old home in village Benga, located in Chhorahi Tehsil of Begusarai district in Bihar where the Kosi river has caused untold damage. She is upset at the lack of any affirmative action by government and local administration in the wake of the floods and erosion, but despite that, her reverence for the river that has caused all the havoc, remains intact. She refers to Kosi as Maiya (mother).

Kosi, that originates in Tibet and flows through Bihar,  has been wreaking havoc in the last few months in Kishanpur and Saraigarh-Bhaptiyahi block of Supaul district in the state, by flooding and causing untold damage through erosion. Benga where Dulari Devi lives and other villages like Bodha, Banainiya, Orahi and Sonbarsa are some of the worst affected, with entire fields of paddy being inundated. Many of these  villages are marooned, accessible only by boats. 

Almost every family living in this area, has someone who is a migrant labourer working in Punjab, Haryana or Delhi.  “There is a massive labour migration from,” Mohammad Iqbal Hussain, a resident of Banainiya village in Bhaptiyahi-Saraigarh, told Gaon Connection.  “Almost all our families have someone who has migrated to other parts of the country to look for a job to feed their families back home,” he said. 

Following the countrywide lockdown in March, a large number of migrant labourers, like Rai, who were working in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, returned home and had only just started returning to work, when floods in the river Kosi once again forced them back home, and to a livelihood crisis.

Earlier in August, 16 districts of Bihar experienced heavy floods, especially in several districts of Mithilanachal, including Supaul and Saharsa, located by the temperamental Kosi river, that is infamous for alter her course; there are 380 villages lying within its eastern and western embankments who are at the mercy of the river and the amount of rainfall in Nepal and the northern region of Bihar.  

While the flood waters have abated, the woes of the villagers have not.  The erosion caused by Kosi has been so substantial that people live in constant fear of the river engulfing their homes at night. “Two days ago there was a tin house here that was swept away at night. Nothing of it remains,” Dulari Devi of Benga told Gaon Connectioning.  Most inhabitants living on the Kosi embankments have family members who are migrant labourers in other states. But thanks to the problems of erosion back home, they are unable to go back to work. 

Most of the villagers affected in the Kosi region are burdened with debts. “We have no other choice but to borrow. First we take the loan, and then we go to another state in order to earn enough to repay the loans, and then try and support our families,” Rai lamented.   

“Our house was swept away. I own less than an acre of land and even is fast eroding. We lost our crop of paddy to the river too and so I had to move back from work. I could have easily worked for another month in the mandi there, but what is to be done,” Ravindra Rai, another migrant labourer from Benga village, told Gaon Connection. Ravindra had left for Haryana to work in a mandi there last month after taking a loan of Rs 6,000.  But within a month, he too had to return home. “Can I leave now before building a house for my family? I cannot abandon them in such a state. I have to work out some system for them before leaving,” he said.

“I have been asked to move away. I have also been threatened with police action if I don’t. But I am not going to move again. I would rather we all go to jail than live like this,” Sati Devi who has lost her five or six bighas of land to the river said.  Forty-five-year-old Sati Devi has had to abandon her home four or five times since she got married, she said. She is determined not to move this time. Her husband and son have been sitting at home since March and will continue to do so till they rebuild their home.

“Currently we are living off the loans. I am the sole bread winner and we are seven people in our family,” Surinder Ram, who lives on the embankment by the Kosi Mahasetu, told Gaon Connection. He has been home for six months too. 

He complained that there was no rehabilitative help forthcoming from the government and neither the block nor the district officers had even visited the affected area.

Gaon Connection tried contacting Supaul’s district magistrate Mahendra Kumar but he did not respond to the calls, mails or WhatsApp messages. The circle officer of Kishanpur also did not respond and neither was the block development officer available for comments. 

Trapped in the vicious circle of unemployment, displacement, landlessness and starvation, the affected villagers are hoping for redemption, not from the government, but from Kosi Maiya. “If the government cannot give us a place to stay, why don’t they just drown us all in the river,” Sati Devi said.

Read the story in Hindi.