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Of Deluge, Candles and Matchboxes The foundation stone of the Kosi Project was laid on January 14, 1955 amidst
fanfare, jubilation and victory. Dr. Shrikrishna Sinha, thgen Chief
Minister of Bihar, laid the foundation stone near Bhutaha village close
to Nirmali, in Saharsa (now Supaul) district with the chanting of
mantras by Pt. Mahabir Jha of Jhitki village and shouting of slogans
like 'Aadhi Roti Khayengein, Kosi Bandh Banaayengein.' (We will eat only
half a chapati but we will surely build the Kosi embankments). A
majority of people lost the other half of the bread too on the 18th
August 2008 when the Kosi embankment breached on that day. Col. Townsend of the US Army while deliberating in a seminar organized by the
American Society of Civil Engineers to discuss the Mississippi floods of
1927 had said that even the best designed and carefully constructed
embankments remain at the mercy of burrowing animals like rats, foxes,
muskrats who can create a hole in the finest levee that has been
devised, which if not closed within a few moments will ensure its
destruction. The Mississippi River of the United States broke loose in
1927 inundating an area of 51,200 sq. kilometer and damaging property to
an estimated extent of two hundred million to a billion dollars. The
breaches drove nearly three quarters of a million people from their
homes and six hundred thousand of them were dependant on Red Cross. The
wealth and power of the United States enabled much to be done for the
sufferers, still they suffered. He further added a 'careless supervisor
and dark nights' to the list destroyers of embankments. His observations
remain valid till date as the Kosi comes out of its shackles in Kusaha
in Nepal some 13 kilometers upstream of the Kosi Barrage. All the eight
breaches that have occurred so far can be brought under these
categories. Col. Townsend gave benefit of doubt to the planners and
engineers when he prefixed 'best designed and carefully constructed'
adjectives to the embankments. The Kosi has breached its embankment
eighth time and it is for the first time that the 'disaster' has
generated so much of interest. These embankments are spaced at an
average distance of 9 to 10 kilometers below the barrage with a maximum
width of 16 kilometres between Kisunipatti and Bhaptiahi and minimum
width of nearly 3 kilometres at the barrage itself. The spacing of the
embankments is only 8 kilometres at the tail end, between Baluaha Ghat
and Ghonghepur. In Nepal portion the spacing between them is restricted
to between 3 to 6 kilometers. Common sense suggests that the spacing
between the embankments should increase as the river advances further as
more and more streams join the river from western side. This simple
common sense was kicked around when these embankments were constructed
in late 1950s. There were 304 villages with a population of 192,000
(1951 census) going to be trapped between the embankments and each one
of them was trying to be located outside the embankments. Later the
embankments were extended and 380 villages of Bihar and 34 villages of
Nepal came within them. Their current population is nearly 1.2 million.
The village locations were fixed and it was the embankment on either
side of the river that could be moved. So did it happen. Now the
embankment alignment is a caricature of what it was designed, if there
was any design. Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Teng Tse Hui
discussing the floods in the Hwang Ho had once said in 1955 that
according to historical records, there have been inundations and
breaches on 1500 or more occasions on the lower reaches of the river and
there were 26 important changes of course, nine of them major
..The
terrible floods of 1933 caused more than 50 breaches of the dykes and
brought disaster to more than 11,000sq. km. Over 3,640,000 people were
affected and over 18,000 killed. Property worth some 230 million Yuans
was lost. In 1938, Chiang Kai Shek Government opened the dykes on the
south bank of the river at Huayuan Kou near Cheng Chow in Honan
province. This led to a major change in the course of the river
affecting 54,000 sq. km. with a population of 12,500,000 and 890,000
people died
.In a hundred years, from 1855 till 1955, the dykes had
breached on 200 occasions. According to an on the spot survey in the
river bed in lower reaches was found to be rising by one to ten
centimeters every year in the middle of this century. In some cases the
existing river bank was found even ten meters higher than the
surrounding country level. Such rapid silting cannot be dealt with
simply by piling up and reinforcing dykes. In a sense, higher and
stronger the dykes, the quicker is the silt deposited because it has no
way of getting out. The Kosi embankments were constructed citing the
wonderful performance of these two rivers. Had Col. Townsend been
living today, he must have amended his statement saying that the
embankments could be ill-conceived, ill-designed and poorly constructed
too. Capt. G.F. Hall, former Chief Engineer of Bihar was of the opinion
that the embankments can only postpone the day of retribution and will
be a store of disaster for the future generation. A status paper
prepared by Government of Bihar in 2003 suggests that those who
subscribe to such views are the people of colonial mindset. The 'nationalist' embankment builders had a last laugh when they succeeded
in bringing Dr. Rajendra Prasad, then President of India' to Bihar
between 17th to 22nd October 1954 and made him request the people to
participate in the 'yagna' of nation building by constructing the Kosi
embankments. His views in the Patna Flood Conference (1937) were
diagonally opposite to what he was made to say in 1954. One can imagine
the stress the President might have undergone during that trip of his
home state of Bihar. Embankments prevent a river from overflowing its
banks during floods but they also prevent the entry of floodwater. This
leads to a major problem as the embanked river is no longer able to
fulfill its primary function draining out excess water. With the
tributaries prevented from discharging into the river and accumulated
rainwater finding no way out, the surrounding areas quickly become
flooded. The situation is aggravated by seepage from under the
embankments. The areas outside the levees remain waterlogged for months
after the rainy season because this water has no way of flowing out to
the sea. Theoretically, sluice gates located at these junctions should
solve the problem but, in practice, such gates quickly become useless;
as the bed level of the main river rises above the surrounding land,
operating the gates lets water out instead of allowing outside water in.
When the sluice gates have failed, the only option left is to also
embank the tributary. This results, then, in water being locked up
between the embankments. Moreover, no embankment has yet been built or
can be built in future that will not breach. When a breach occurs, there
is a deluge. This is what happened at Kusaha this year on the 18th
August 2008. Proponents of embankments have tried to rationalize the
jacketing of rivers thus: Forcing the same quantity of water through a
narrow area, as happens in case of an embanked river, increase the water
velocity thereby increasing its eroding capacity. The increased velocity
of water dredges the river bottom and transports the sediment out
preventing the rise of riverbed levels, increasing the carrying capacity
of the river and reducing the extent of flooding. These were the
arguments put forward by engineers in independent India when they
resorted to massive embanking of rivers in the Ganga and the Brahmaputra
basin. Unfortunately, there has been little evidence to date that this
theory is actually being substantiated anywhere on Indian rivers. The
technical debate, however, continues at that level. At the field level in the flooded areas of Bihar, there is a continuing debate on
polythene sheets, rice, vegetables, salt, candle and match-boxes etc.
How strategic is this deflection of debate that the people discuss keep
discussing about sattu (ground gram), chura (flattened rice) candles and
matchboxes. This is what precisely the politicians want and if they are
not brought to the real issues of dealing with the sediments,
floodwaters, accountability and an informed debate; the event would
simply pass of as the earlier ones. Dinesh Kumar Mishra Convenor Barh Mukti Abhiyan 6-B Rajiv Nagar Patna 800024
Bihar-India __._,_.___
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