Bihar River Embankments Criticised

The continued building of river embankments along riversides in Bihar, India has been heavily criticised at a conference on floods and conflict.

Speaking at the conference, Chandrashekhar, the secretary of a Supaul-based NGO said:

“The extent of recurring damage can be estimated from the fact that initially Bihar had only 160km of embankment length in 1952 with 2.5 million hectare of flood-prone area. However, in 2002, the total length of the embankment increased to 3,430km and the flood-prone area increased to 6.88 million hectare.”

The conference took place on 22nd October in Patna, the state capital of Bihar. Under the heading Agony of Floods: Flood Induced Water Conflicts in India: A Compendium of Case Studies, the conference was organized by India’s Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India and Megh Pyne Abhiyan.

The main points arising from yesterday’s discussions were that, despite the huge increase in embankments in Bihar, flood prone areas in the state have actually increased.

Dinesh Kumar Mishra, an engineer from IIT, also criticised the building of embankments, saying that not only did they worsen floods, they also heightened the possibilities of conflict between groups of residents. He said that

“Proper drainage of the flood waters is needed but these embankments actually prohibit the flow of water.”

According to the Forum’s statement, the main aim of the conference is to get to understand the sources of flood induced conflicts in India

…capturing, understanding, and disseminating knowledge, and initiating a dialogue around flood induced conflicts in different locations in India…understanding the correlation between floods and the conflict perspective will not only broaden the existing discourse around floods but also strengthen the effort to showcase the extended impact of human induced disaster in the country leading to better strategies in dealing with them

At the conference, Dinesh Kumar Mishra went on to explain that on some occasions, people themselves breached the embankments to let the flood waters flow from their areas, leading to violence between communities on either side of the embankments.

Source: Times of India

India