case study of flood in bihar

IMPACTS OF FLOOD AND ITS MANAGEMENT – A CASE STUDY OF BIHAR.

• Professor, Deptt. of Water Resources Development & Management, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee-247667 India.
• PG Student, Deptt. of Water Resources Development & Management, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee-247667 India.
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• Corresponding Author

Floods are most recurring and frequent natural hazard in India causing enormous loss to life and livelihood, and damage to infrastructure. In India, Bihar is one of the worst affected states due to floods. As per one estimate, in Bihar flood affects about 6.880 million hectares of land out of about 9.416 million hectare, which is about 73.06%. It not only affects the infrastructure but also the socio-economic life in the state. So, there is a need to minimize negative consequences and ill effects of flooding by means of flood management. In Bihar, most of the times, the decision makers go for structural measures like construction of embankments, flood retention walls, flood levees and channel improvements, etc. However, it is felt that structural measures itself is not sufficient to reduce the adverse impacts of floods in the state. Hence non-structural measures like flood plain management policy, building bye-laws, flow and silt management policy are also required. It contemplates the use of flood plains judiciously, simultaneously permitting vacating of the same for use by the river whenever the situation demands. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the severity of flood impacts on development of state and to discuss the possible flood management measures in context of Bihar.

• Floods in Bihar
• Flood Impacts
• Flood Management
• Structural and Non-structural Measures.
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[ Mitthan Lal Kansal,Kumar Abhishek Kishore,Prashant Kumar (2017); IMPACTS OF FLOOD AND ITS MANAGEMENT – A CASE STUDY OF BIHAR. Int. J. of Adv. Res. 5 (Mar). 1695-1706] (ISSN 2320-5407). www.journalijar.com

Article DOI: 10.21474/IJAR01/3681       DOI URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.21474/IJAR01/3681

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Assessing the district-level flood vulnerability in Bihar, eastern India: an integrated socioeconomic and environmental approach

• Published: 09 August 2024
• Volume 196 , article number  799 , ( 2024 )

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• Guru Dayal Kumar   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0004-8638-7804 1 &
• Kalandi Charan Pradhan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5715-4623 1  

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States of India like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal along the Ganga River, endure natural disasters periodically, resulting in repeated trends of economic loss and damages. Especially, most of the districts of Bihar, India, are prone to floods. Based on this background, this study aims to assess the flood vulnerabilities across districts of Bihar, India, employing data from the Central Water Commission from 1953 to 2020. Further, we explore trends and patterns of loss and damage due to flood risks in Bihar. Using the flood vulnerability integrated method and the principal component analysis, the index is constructed by incorporating the three major indicators: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. This study is unique, and advances from previous studies in using a greater number of variables in exposure indicator. The proxy variable for each indicator is identified through both inductive and deductive approaches, and the composite index is constructed using all three indicators. Also, we identify the districts with high level of education and per capita income are less likely to expose flood vulnerability. The comparison of the districts reflects wide range of variation in terms of flood vulnerability as per their adaptive capacity and sensitivity. Specifically, these findings align with Target Sustainable Development Goal 11.5. This study addresses the policy for disaster prevention, risk reduction, and mitigation measures, as well as the enhancement of the capability of adaptation to floods by the affected community.

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Source: Authors’ computation based on the secondary data of Central Water Commission 2022

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Guru dayal kumar has done the conceptualization, data collection, data analysis, methodology, statistical analysis, and critical review of the manuscript, and Kalandi charan pradhan has done the supervision, conceptualization, methodology, and final manuscript review. All the authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Kumar, G.D., Pradhan, K.C. Assessing the district-level flood vulnerability in Bihar, eastern India: an integrated socioeconomic and environmental approach. Environ Monit Assess 196 , 799 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-024-12952-0

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Resilient Bihar: case study of Bihar floods 2016

Disaster has become a regular global event adversely affecting lives of millions of people. The question is why so many people are affected. The reason being increased vulnerability created by human being itself. To reduce increasing disaster risks communities need to be resilient. This is why ‘disaster risk reduction’ policies are being introduced.

This paper discusses roadmap for disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Bihar and its implementation at the grassroot level. Taking the case of 2016 Bihar Floods, the paper tries to look into how the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) actively work towards fulfilling targets and milestones of the ‘Bihar DRR Roadmap’, which was inspired by the Sendai Framework launched in Japan in 2015.

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The tragedy of floods in Bihar is an annual saga. This year, according to the eastern Indian state’s disaster management department, 1,333 villages in 16 districts were flooded, affecting a population of 8.4 million . There have been 27 casualties and extensive damage to paddy and sugarcane crops. The Bihar government is currently assessing the damage.

Last year 1,724 villages in 26 districts were affected by floods, and at least 30 people were killed.

This year the rivers Gandak, Budhi Gandak, Bagmati, Lakhandei and Avadhara flooded much of north Bihar. Embankments (walls of earth or stone that prevent rivers from flooding the surrounding land) were broken at half a dozen places on the Gandak and Budhi Gandak rivers. The Gandak breached an embankment and flooded about 50 square kilometres in Sangrampur block of East Champaran district. In Gopalganj district, 66 villages were flooded due to another breach in the embankment.

Due to heavy rains in Nepal in the last week of July, the flow in all these tributaries of the Ganga flowing down from Nepal increased considerably. The discharge into the Gandak exceeded 4,00,000 cusecs and its embankment was breached at many places.

When the Gandak breached its embankment near Bhavanipur village in East Champaran district, residents had to run to save their lives, children in their arms and pulling the cattle by the halters. Hundreds of mud houses collapsed. Foodgrains and essentials kept in them were washed away.

More rain than average

According to Bihar’s minister of water resources, the main reason for this year’s flood was heavy rainfall in ​​Nepal and Bihar. As a result, around 4,36,000 cusecs of water was discharged from the Balmikinagar barrage into the Gandak. Downstream areas received 200 mm more rain than the average between July 19 and 21. As a result, another 5,35,000 cusecs were released from the Saran dam.

According to the Disaster Management Department, until August rainfall in Bihar had been 20% above average. But in the flood-hit districts of north Bihar, it was 30-50% above average.

Life on embankments

Millions of flood victims had to camp out on embankments, highways and flood-relief camps when their houses collapsed or were filled with water. By the third week of August, those still in the camps had received nothing but chiwda (a snack made of fried lentils, peanuts, chickpea flour, corn, vegetable oil, chickpeas, flaked rice, fried onion and curry leaves), jaggery and some bottles of water.

Those affected said that the administration was quick to deal with the breaches, but did little for the people. In many places, embankments – or even four-lane highways such as from Darbhanga to Muzaffarpur – had to be closed to traffic because people were camped there.

Raju Sahni, one of those affected, said he had been living on the highway for a month. Some have returned home as the floodwaters receded, while most of the men have gone in search of work. While the government claims the food and plastic sheets for tents it distributes reach hundreds of thousands, many people complained that they had received nothing.

Rivers imprisoned in embankments

Since India’s independence in 1947, embankment construction was introduced as a magic solution to prevent floods. Embankments continued to be built for hundreds of kilometres every year. The budget for the construction, repairs, gradation and reinforcement of embankments reached Rs 156 crore ($200 million) per year, according to the Bihar Water Resources Department’s 2018-19 report.

Dinesh Kumar Mishra, the doyen of river experts in Bihar, had written that this policy was accepted as a way to control floods in 1954. At that time, apart from embankments built by large landlords, the length of embankments in Bihar was 160 km, and 2.5 million hectares were considered flood-prone. According to the latest data from the Department of Water Resources, a total of 3,790 km of the embankment have now been built on 13 rivers in Bihar.

Nevertheless, the floods persist, and now the flood-prone area in Bihar is 6.8 million hectares.

‘We have received no benefit’

An embankment has been built on the Bagmati river from Katunjha in Muzaffarpur district to Aurahi and beyond. Construction is still ongoing. The embankment will be extended to Darbhanga district. The embankment saved people from flood in the Bagmati, but the water was diverted to Lakhandei – another tributary of the Ganga – which flooded. Roads are cut off, and people have to use boats to reach their homes.

“We have received no benefit from this scheme,” Harishchandra Sahani of Katunjha said. “Previously, the waters of the Bagmati and Lakhandei used to combine, spread out, and then the floodwaters would recede. Now the waters of the Lakhandei stay stuck around us like a disease for three months. There is a lot of damage to crops.”

Pointing to the paddy crop submerged in the floodwaters, Sahani said that all the investment was wasted.

In the records of the administration, these villages are now free from floods, but the villagers have not been freed from their problems.

Embankments breached every year

Most embankments on the rivers of north Bihar breach every year. The flood situation becomes more severe when the breach occurs and all the floodwater gushes out to spread over a large area. What is worse, when the waterflow in the river reduces, the floodwaters cannot return to the river. Without the force of the flood, the water cannot cross roads and culverts to get back.

On top of that, since embankments prevent the silt from the river from spreading in the surrounding land, the riverbed is usually higher than the land around, so the water is stuck inside a bowl-like depression for months.

The 2019 report of the Water Resources Department totals embankment breaches in various rivers from 1987 to 2018 at 408.

Who gets the compensation

Apart from plastic sheets and food, this year the state government reported that it deposited Rs 6,000 ($81) in the bank account of each flood victim. According to the report of the Disaster Management Department, this amount had been distributed to 1,00,000 people by August 31.

But residents of the flood-hit village Bhavanipur said they had not received anything. Shivrati Devi said her six goats and a calf were swept away in the flood. Her house collapsed and she had just one sari to wear. The plights of other women from this village were similar, as was that of people in relief camps in other districts.

Ramrati from Naya village in Samastipur district said, “Maybe the government had sent the money, but middlemen and brokers managed to steal it for themselves.”

The cost of this flood relief, whether it reaches the intended beneficiaries or not, is a huge burden on the state exchequer. On August 10, the chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, raised this issue in a conversation with the prime minister about flooding.

He stated that Rs 2,385 crore (USD 32 million) had been distributed in 2017, and Rs 2,000 crore ($27 million) in 2019.

But when seen from the point of view of a flood victim, the Rs 6,000 amount is very small. Camping on an embankment after being flooded out of his house, Dahaur Singh of Singahi village said, “With this amount, I cannot even repair one corner of my house.”

Jagarnath Prasad Singh, a 74-year-old resident of the same village, said that the village farmed around 600 bighas (a land unit that varies from region to region and ranges from a third to a three-quarters of an acre) of land, but this year the entire crop had been ruined by floods. “It costs Rs 50,000 ($677) to plant a bigha of paddy. What are we to do with the government’s 6,000?”

Displaced forever

When the floodwaters recede, many will return to their villages. This is not possible for those whose land has been lost due to erosion, or when a river changed course.

Since 2014, 41 families of Rampur Mahanwa village in West Champaran district have been living near a roadside drain. These include 27 Dalit families and 14 Muslim families. The Muslims live north of the road and the Dalits south of it.

One of them, Amanullah, recounts how these families were displaced by the erosion of the Gandak and wandered for two decades. When they staged a sit-in, they were settled beside a drain on the roadside. In the last week of July, all their huts were submerged by floodwater. Many collapsed. Now all are living on the road. Apart from plastic sheets, they have not received any assistance. All these families are landless. They used to go to Nepal to work as labourers, but travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic has deprived them of that opportunity as well.

While these people have been resettled – even if near a drain – the people of Chakdeiya village in Muzaffarpur district are still without a place to call their own after 33 years. The village was completely washed away in 1987 due to erosion by the Gandak. The villagers moved to the northern side of the western Champaran embankment. Since then they have been living near the embankment.

This year their huts were submerged again, due to the breach near Bhavanipur. People on one side of the embankment are hit by floodwaters directly, people on the other side are hit because the water has breached the embankment and spread all over their homes. Residents Narayan Sahni and Bharat Sahni said, “On this side, there is the river, and on the other side there is the river.”

Money down the drain

There are now very few experts in favour of constructing embankments for flood control. The Bihar government itself believes that “construction of embankments is a short-term plan for flood control.” Yet, it is still pushing this as the only “solution”.

For decades, Dinesh Kumar Mishra has been drawing attention to the negligible benefits of embankments. He has written, “Silt starts to accumulate between the embankments, which causes the river floor to rise gradually and at the same time the flood level between the embankments also rises. Due to this, it becomes a compulsion of engineers to keep the embankments elevated.”

But the higher they are elevated, the more the risk of a disaster from a breach as well as the issue of waterlogging from leakages.

Mishra is no longer alone in his opinions. In 2012 two professors from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Rajiv Sinha and BC Roy Mahashay, published a well-known work, “Flood Disaster and Management: Indian scenario”. They showed how embankments have severely affected the natural flow system of rivers and have increased the intensity of floods by obstructing the flow of the main river and the links between the river channels.

The embankments create a “false sense of protection from floods”, and despite the massive amounts of money spent, the damage from flooding has increased rather than reduced, the experts point out. The poorest are the worst affected, while a huge amount of public money is spent in their names to repair embankments and build new ones.

Experts say it is time to move from flood control to flood management, which emphasises the understanding of flood processes and favours a non-structural approach to reducing flood risk. But policymakers continue on the old path.

Mishra said, “We spent billions of rupees on flood control or management, and it has left us at a disadvantage rather than benefited us; those who should have been worried about it are sitting with their eyes closed.”

This article first appeared on The Third Pole .

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A decadal historical satellite data analysis for flood hazard evaluation: A case study of Bihar (North India)

2015, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

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GIS-based Flood Risk Mapping: The Case Study of Kosi River Basin, Bihar, India

• Niraj Kumar Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Patna, India
• Ramakar Jha Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Patna, India

Received: 27 September 2022 | Revised: 1 November 2022 and 6 November 2022 | Accepted: 7 November 2022 | Online: 22 November 2022

Flood risk mapping aims to create an easily read and rapidly accessible map to prioritize the mitigation effects. This study presents an empirical approach to flood risk mapping through the integration of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. SRTM 30m DEM is processed using ArcGIS 10.3 software. The study methodology includes the selection of the study area, the identification of the factors responsible for flood and collection of the required data, the generation of the desired thematic layers, and their integration to produce the flood risk map. Geomorphic, hydrologic, and socio-economic analyses are carried out to generate the thematic layers, namely slope, district`s distance to active stream, highest elevation, drainage density, rainfall, population density, and land use-land cover. AHP is used to determine the relative impact weight of the thematic layers. The influence of each thematic layer and the scale values provided based on the weights and score calculated by the AHP are used to integrate the layers in GIS environment to prepare the flood risk map. Consistency ratios are determined from the judgment process to validate the reliability of the proposed approach and results. The study classified the area falling in the basin under different risk zones with Purnia and Madhepura having large areas under high risk. This study may aid decision and policymakers in the evaluation and rapid assessment of flooding phenomena in the region.

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In Bihar, women face floods and increasing violence

By Shreya Raman

After devastating floods struck the northeastern Indian state of Bihar in August 2017, the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi,  conducted  an aerial survey of the affected areas. At the time, nearly  3,000 square kilometres  of the state were under water – an area twice the size of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. According to  official figures , the disaster killed 815 people and forced nearly 900,000 people from their homes, leaving many with no choice but to live on roads, rail tracks and rooftops.

Invisible from the prime minister’s helicopter, however, was the increased violence and insecurity unleashed upon girls and women of the region in the wake of the disaster.

Hema Devi*, a teenager from the district of Araria, was just one of the victims of this increased threat. The flood had submerged her village, forcing her and her mother to live in a makeshift tent along the national highway – although this had become an almost annual occurrence. In February 2018, just a few months after the floods, a man approached Hema’s mother offering to pay INR 5,000 (USD 67) to let him marry her daughter.

Marriage, it seemed, offered the possibility for a better life for Hema, who had had a difficult childhood, stopping her education when she was 11 years old to tend to her ill mother and earn for the family. “My mother thought he was a good man and was based in Araria [so they would be close after the marriage],” Hema told The Third Pole.

But her mother was wrong. After only a month in Araria, Hema’s husband moved the couple to the city of Chandigarh in the northwestern state of Punjab, where he physically abused her. She endured this abuse for six months before escaping. “I reached the railway station and asked people where the train was going,” she said. “I found my way to Purnea station [near Araria] and got home.” Hema faced backlash from her mother upon her return, but this has now settled down. She works locally, running a shop along the highway, and says she wishes to never marry again.

Hema’s experience of increased exposure to the threat of violence following disaster is not uncommon, nor limited to major events such as those of August 2017: during visits to Bihar’s Araria and Katihar districts, interviewees told The Third Pole that annual floods in the area are creating stressors that exacerbate violence against women and girls. Nor are such risks limited to Bihar or wider India. With climate change leading to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as floods, women are disproportionately impacted. Across the world,  multiple studies have linked extreme weather events with an increase in violence against women and girls.

Floods exacerbate preference for boys

In India, extreme weather events tend to lead to  greater out-migration , especially for marginalised communities. Men more often migrate to other parts of the country to work, and women are left behind with few income opportunities. Thus, male children are considered to be sources of income while female children are often seen as burdens, including because of the high prevalence of dowry payments upon marriage. This preference for sons  perpetuates discrimination and violence against women and girls by putting added pressure on women to give birth to male children.

Bina Devi, a woman from the village of Devipur in Katihar district, is one woman who told of such pressures. A mother to three sons, she said she would have died if she hadn’t had a male child, as there would be no breadwinner for the family. Five years ago, after her husband died, her eldest son was forced to migrate and provide for the family when he was only 10 years old. Now, at 15, he continues to provide for his two brothers, a sister and mother.

In a recent  study of gendered vulnerabilities associated with floods in Bihar, authors heard that households with more daughters are the most vulnerable. When entire villages are inundated, households in the region frequently make tripod-like structures called machhans to support their huts and to create a platform to guard their possessions. This is considered to be men’s work, with women not allowed to take part even if they are physically capable. Women-only households are thus forced to move to higher ground and set up makeshift tents.

After the floods, rebuilding houses is also seen as men’s work. Women-only households have to rely on male relatives or have to pay men in the village to do the task for them. Hiring this labour would cost as much as INR 350 (USD 5) per day, according to women from Devipur village. This is a heavy cost in a state with a  per capita annual income of INR 34,000 (USD 460), or about INR 90 (USD 1.21) a day.

Dowry and increased vulnerability to trafficking

Pressures around dowry, demanded by a man’s family upon marriage, also present an added burden for women and their families – and one that often heightens vulnerability to violence and harassment. Bina’s youngest daughter is 12 years old, but the mother is already worried. “I have to start saving money now so that she can get married in a few years,” she told The Third Pole. “People ask for INR 400,000–500,000 [USD 5,400-6,700] in dowry. No one will marry her without dowry. If we don’t give dowry, they might kill her or divorce her.”

Dowry was mentioned as the primary reason for seeking to borrow money in the aforementioned study of gendered vulnerabilities in Bihar. This financial risk, combined with the loss of livelihoods and food security during floods, further increases the vulnerability of young girls and, often, their parents.

Chandni, a young woman from Katihar district, is 18 but her father has already been approached by three different suitors. She has been able to persuade her family to allow her to continue her education instead, especially as she suspected them to be traffickers. “They always approach my father and try to convince him by saying that ‘You have three daughters. The suitor is a doctor and will take care of all the expenses and will not ask for dowry’,” Chandni told The Third Pole. “And they are always from far-off places like Muzaffarpur near the border [of the neighbouring state] of Uttar Pradesh,” about 300 kilometres from her home in Katihar.

For many, such a waiver of dowry may seem too good to turn down, but Chandni’s family are resisting, even amid financial pressures that floods only exacerbate. “This is a flood-prone area so it is difficult to sustain ourselves here,” her mother said. “We lease land for around INR 20,000 [USD 270; per year] and grow crops. But this year, we lost crops across 1.5 bigha [close to 3,800m2] of land. We work to earn, but if there are no earnings, what can we do?”

Displacement and harassment in tents and camps

According to government data collated by The Third Pole, between 2010 to 2019 more than half a million houses were damaged in Bihar due to floods. This forced residents, such as Hema and her mother, to move to shelters or set up temporary camps along highways and railway tracks. In these camps, where tents are close to each other, young women and girls are frequently subjected to harassment and violence.

“Within a few days of living in camps, people learn who lives next to them and where,” said Sudha Varghese, an activist working in Bihar with Dalits and mahadalits – the most marginalised social communities, previously referred to as “untouchables” until untouchability was outlawed under the Constitution of India, which came into effect in 1950. Varghese reported that there have been cases of sexual harassment and violence in the camps, in which young girls and women are victimised.

A 2016  study on the impact of flooding on women in Bihar also found similar instances. “We face the problem of eve-teasing [a euphemism for sexual harassment used in Indian English] and harassment because our parents left us alone in [the] house and there was no security,” 16-year-old Rekha Yadav told the author of the research.

Need for more research and targeted policies

Globally, various studies have highlighted the role climate change plays in exacerbating violence against women and girls. A  2020 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature highlighted how environmental degradation can worsen various forms of gender-based violence such as sexual assault, domestic violence and forced prostitution.

In wider South Asia, a 2010  study looked at the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on gender-based violence in Sri Lanka, while research  published in 2020 explored similar links between floods and violence in Pakistan’s Sindh region. Both studies found that women face an increased risk of physical, emotional and sexual violence in the aftermath of such events. 

Meanwhile in India, a 2020 study  looked at the correlation between the 2004 Tsunami and intimate partner violence, while a  2018 paper showed how rainfall variability and depletion of groundwater in the southern state of Tamil Nadu is leading to women’s jewellery being taken and used as tools to dig more borewells. “This is a subtle shift of power from women to men,” said Nitya Rao, professor of gender and development at the UK’s University of East Anglia, and one of the authors of the paper.

While these smaller studies highlight indirect links, researchers say that drawing a direct causal link is impossible as multiple factors influence the incidence of violence. Lack of research and data is impeding the understanding of the triggers for gender-based violence associated with climate change.

Anjal Prakash, Research Director and adjunct associate professor in the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business, points out that relatively few researchers work on gender issues, and also highlights difficulties in data gathering: “For any researcher to explore these issues, the data has to be sex disaggregated and should include indicators that highlight social inequity.”

"Even policies that address gender look at women as a category, and fail to analyse how gender intersects with other forms of marginalisation." Nitya Rao, professor of gender and development at the University of East Anglia

Meanwhile, Smitha Rao, an assistant professor in the College of Social Work at Ohio State University and author of the Indian tsunami impact study, told The Third Pole that successive rounds of changes to the structure and methodology of the National Family Health Survey – the country’s most extensive source of data on health, marriage and domestic violence in India – made comparing data difficult. Also, this survey provided data on violence against women at the state level, making an understanding of impacts at more granular levels difficult.

The current government policies on climate change and disasters also lack a gendered perspective. A recently released parliamentary  report on flooding does not mention women, while  43% of the 28 state action plans on climate change make no substantial mention of gender.

Even the policies that do address gender look at women as a category, and fail to analyse how gender intersects with other forms of marginalisation, said Nitya Rao: “In the context of India, caste [also] plays an important role. Ultimately it is about unequal power and power relations.” And climate related disasters are making those relations ever more unequal, at great cost to women across the world.

*Names have been changed to protect identities

Read the original story here

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Bihar villagers face severe flood threat as river Ganga overflows in Bhagalpur

26 august 2024, 03:07 pm ist.

A view of an area flooded with the swollen Ganga river water after heavy rainfall, in Patna | File Photo: PTI

Patna: Villagers in Naugachia, Bhagalpur district, are facing an urgent flood threat as water levels in the Ganga River continue to rise. The situation has worsened following a breach of a 200-metre embankment in Bindtoli village along the river. This breach has caused water to flood around 20 nearby villages, displacing many residents who are now living in temporary shelters on the remaining embankment. Authorities have advised these villagers to move to safer locations as soon as possible.

“We have already been displaced from our villages and are now residing on the embankment of Bind Toli. Now, the administration is asking us to vacate the embankment as well. Some villagers have moved in with their relatives, but we have no such option. We are living in a state of uncertainty as we have nowhere to take shelter,” said Ram Kumar, a resident of the affected area.

Dr. Uttam Kumar, the Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) of the Naugachia subdivision in Bhagalpur, mentioned, “After the embankment was breached, soil erosion started occurring in the region. We have initiated restoration work, which is why we have asked the villagers to vacate the embankment.”

He also mentioned that the embankment, which was constructed in 2008 at a cost of Rs 43 crore, has been compromised.

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The flood threat extends beyond Bhagalpur, affecting several other districts. Rivers such as the Ganga, Gandak, Bagmati, Kosi, Ghagra, and Burhi Gandak are all flowing above their danger levels due to heavy rains in the catchment areas, including in neighbouring Nepal.

In Dumaria Ghat, Gopalganj district, the Gandak River is 64 cm above the danger level, with a water level of 62.86 metres. The Kosi River is also a major concern, with water levels exceeding danger levels at multiple points. In Khagaria district, the Kosi River is 1.11 metres above the danger level in Baltara and 84 cm above in Kursela. The Bagmati River in Benibad, Muzaffarpur, is flowing 98 cm above danger levels, and the Burhi Gandak River in Khagaria is 95 cm above.

In Patna district, the Ganga River is 50 cm above the danger level at Gandhi Ghat and 58 cm above at Hathidah. At Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district, it is 90 cm above. The Ghagra River is 36 cm above the danger level at Darauli in Siwan district.

The worsening flood situation is causing growing concern as rising water levels threaten more areas across Bihar.

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Patna, Aug 24 (PTI) The Bihar government on Saturday authorised district magistrates (DMs) to take a call on the closing of schools if a flood-like situation occurs in their respective areas of jurisdiction.

Such an order comes after a government school teacher fell into the Ganga river near Patna on Friday and got swept away by strong currents. The incident took place at Nasriganj ghat where Avinash Kumar took a boat to reach his school in Chhota Kasimchak locality.

In a missive to all DMs in the state, Education Department Secretary Baidya Nath Yadav said, “Under the provisions of the Disaster Management rules, DMs can take a call on closing schools if a flood-like situation occurs in their respective areas of jurisdiction”.

Meanwhile, a search operation is on for the government school teacher who went missing after falling into the river.

While riding the boat, he tripped and fell into the riverbed, which remains swollen during the rainy season, police said. Personnel of the state disaster response force have been pressed into service to trace the teacher, who hails from the Fatuha block of Patna district.

The Education Department also directed all DMs to ensure that only registered boats are allowed to ferry teachers and students in the flood-hit areas.

Besides, the district administrations must ensure that every person ferrying on boats must wear a life jacket, said the department, adding an adequate number of life jackets must be made available at all important ghats in the state. PTI PKD BDC

This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

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