In August 2008, Bihar skilled one among the worst floods in virtually 5 many years when the Kosi River breached its embankment at Kusaha in Sunsari district of Nepal, killing larger than 400 folks and displacing thousands. A staggering 33 lakh folks were affected at the discontinue of the flood in Bihar.
Indeed, the Kosi River breaches the partitions of its embankment every few years, imperilling lives and livelihoods, and earning it the name ‘river of sorrow.’
Within the eastern Gangetic plains and the adjoining floodplains, rivers like overflowed all around the monsoons for hundreds of years, inflicting catastrophic floods. The Kosi originates in Tibet and Nepal and later joins the Ganga in Bihar. In general known as “sapta Kosi” because of its seven tributaries, it is a fragile and dynamic river that naturally carries massive portions of sediment. Over the years, the river has shifted its direction by loads of kilometres, subsequently triggering floods.
Committee train
In step with a train of the Folks’s Payment on the Kosi basin, an impartial price, the river has moved 120 km westwards in the closing 250 years because of a heavy pure sedimentation process. Consultants counsel the improvement of a barrage in Nepal in the Fifties, adopted by an embankment in Bihar, has critically altered the river’s pure drift.
Embankments are man made buildings manufactured from earth, stone or concrete, designed to deal with watch over water drift in flood-inclined areas. These buildings are made to suffer the results of gravity, water pressure, and other external forces and are expected to remain stable over time. Whereas they’re often promoted as a terrific solution to guard settlements and toughen agriculture, experts like prolonged warned of their boundaries.
In 1951, the G.R. Garg Committee train of the Central Waterways, Irrigation and Navigation Payment warned in opposition to such projects. It used to be appointed after Assam decided to carry out an embankment, hoping to forestall floods all around the monsoon. The train seen that the 2 indispensable concepts of a river, providing land (by eroding and depositing) and draining its basin, are disrupted by embankments. It extra cautioned that these buildings are priceless most productive when the river carries much less silt; otherwise they may maybe additionally attain extra damage than horny.
In preference to pay designate to those warnings, then again, the Assam authorities proceeded with constructing embankments along the Brahmaputra River. Whereas the foundation used to be easy — to forestall floods — its effects were counterproductive. In Assam, in particular, unpleasant silt and sand were deposited by rivers on the banks, affecting agriculture. Local communities lived in constant terror of a breach. Siltation diminished the river’s depth and made navigation extra complex.
Flood deal with watch over
“The northern rivers raise heaps of silt. So whenever you happen to embank them, the river keeps getting elevated as a result of accumulation of silt,” said E. Somanathan, head of the Centre for Compare on the Economics of Climate Commerce, Food, Energy and Ambiance. “And because every monsoon the silt provides up, an embanked river after about a years turns harmful, even supposing in the foundation it provided some security.”
Here is why such incidents connected to the Kosi aren’t isolated: the river breached its embankment in 1963, 1968, 1971, 1980, 1984, 1987, and in 1991, sooner than it breached again in 2008 and 2024.
Almost precisely a Twelve months previously, when the Mahuli tributary of the Kosi River entered India and hit the Kosi barrage, the quantity of the silt in the river elevated, inflicting devastating floods. Yearly, the quantity of silt threatens locals and submerges sizable tracts of agricultural land.
The repeated breaches raise a necessary query: will like to embankments be regarded as flood-deal with watch over buildings at all?
Influent and affluent rivers
“Whether or not embankments are compulsory is counting on the aim,” Rahul Yaduka, a postdoctoral student engaged on the WATCON Project at The Faculty of Oriental and African Compare, London, said. “If improvement is the aim, then embankments will attend the motive because you tame the river. But folks like constantly been living with floods for hundreds of years.”
When the British seen that the Kosi River used to be transferring its direction, they found it complex to deal with watch over it, and decided to carry out an embankment to deal with watch over the drift. However the outcomes of this exercise used to be water-logging outdoors the embankment, inflicting floods for these who live between the embankment,” Dr. Yaduka added.
On the different hand, Bindhy W. Pandey, director of the Centre for Himalayan Compare at the College of Delhi, argued that embankments can play a necessary characteristic in rivers in the western Himalayan set as they’re much less flood-inclined and geologically extra stable. He, then again, cautioned in opposition to constructing embankments on the rivers in the eastern Himalayan set as they were at possibility of breaches, geologically weaker and extra inclined to landslides.
“Rivers draining in the west are influent, meaning that as the river flows by different States, the precipitation decreases. Whereas the east-flowing rivers are affluent, that is, the quantity of precipitation increases all over time,” said Prof. Pandey. He added that improvement in such geologically old regions must be paired with constant monitoring and a clear rehabilitation process for the displaced folks.
His argument circled help to Dr. Somanathan’s warning: that embankments may maybe additionally offer non permanent security but often start the door for prolonged-term vulnerability.
‘No longer a viable probability’
“The US has dismantled embankments and allowed the flood to happen. When we accomplish extra infrastructure that alters the river’s direction, the river mattress keeps rising silt, but floods without embankments are critical milder. If an embankment is constructed, then we desire to deal with raising its height. But that requires funds,” Dr. Somanathan said.
The different that he proposed is to ‘be taught to live with floods’.
“When we attain that, we’re allowing the river to act as a pure drainage device,” Dr. Somanathan said. Mahendra Yadav, member of the Kosi Nav Nirman Manch Motion, also stands by the conception that of ‘living with floods’ but believes this will seemingly maybe well seemingly additionally happen most productive if folks between the Kosi embankment are trained with early warning systems and provided rehabilitation outdoors. “The answer that can even be provided to folks is to rehabilitate them outdoors the embankment because if the embankment is obstructing them, they may be able to not find out, even with early warning systems.”
“For India, an embankment just isn’t a viable probability because we don’t just like the infrastructure to deal with it,” Dr. Somanathan said. But as the embankments are a fact for heaps of rivers in northern India, Dr. Yaduka urged that one has to “name ways to construct them better and stable. Alongside with that, paleochannels (abandoned ragged river or circulate channels) needs to be revived so that water is disbursed.”
Mr. Yadav also suggests the improvement of palaeochannels, which dangle the water properly within their basins, battling floods.
Broad guarantees
Sooner than the Bihar election this Twelve months, the Nationwide Democratic Alliance (NDA) promised “flood to fortune” of their election manifesto for the oldsters of Bihar. The coalition assured residents that if elected to energy, the newly shaped authorities will provoke the river-linking project, embankments and canals below the “flood to fortune” mannequin to promote agriculture and fisheries, in step with the ‘Sankalp Patra’ launched jointly by the BJP and NDA.
Despite the actual fact that this promise carries with it a tone of political optimism, the Relate’s geography is complex and requires a deeper conception of the prolonged-standing ecological realities, including sedimentation and siltation. The river-linking project in query is the Kosi-Mechi project, which objectives to elongate the EKMC (Jap Kosi Indispensable Canal) up to the river Mechi, a tributary of the river Mahananda, mainly to produce irrigation to the water-scarce set along the Mahananda basin all around the kharif season. Alternatively, in spite of the full lot, if it rains arrive the Kosi catchment set of living, the monsoon reaches Mahananda in a day or two and there’s barely any need for water all around the monsoon.
“But if the converse [flooding] used to be to be solved by an embankment, then there ought to were no floods at all, but that just isn’t the case. If the river-linking project is executed, 5,247 cusecs of additional water will be diverted in direction of the Mechi River. But in the floods closing Twelve months, Kosi river carried virtually 6 lakh cusecs of water. So, we’re not cutting again the flood water by constructing embankments or by linking the rivers,” Mr. Yadav defined.
Yearly, Moreover cash must be spent on raising the embankment, but that just isn’t a sustainable solution, he added. “For sure, it is a luxurious selection. Despite the actual fact that cash is spent, does it truly deal with? And extra importantly, who is making the most of it? The locals stuck [with] the embankment face the wrath without any rehabilitation products and companies.”
“With the embankment, the flood has elevated virtually four times,” Mr. Yadav said. He added that desilting needs to be performed in step with scientific concepts.
Dr. Somanathan strongly argued that embankments disturb the ecological integrity, groundwater, and biodiversity, and expressed hope that the discourse would substitute from flood-deal with watch over to flood-resistance.
For the households that lose their properties every Twelve months when a river swells, the embankment is each a possibility and a promise, a line drawn in opposition to nature that certainly not appears to be like to deal with for prolonged. But as the Kosi’s chronicle illustrates, every time an embankment is raised, the river is speedily to reclaim its domain.
