Kosi Embankment—The Sixth Breach
(Navhatta 1984)
Background—Breaching of the Kosi embankments have never been unknown. If only the lessons from earlier breaches had been taken seriously, Kusaha tragedy (18th August 2008) might not have occurred at all. The Kusaha story in its entirety will be known only after the Judicial Inquiry Commission set up to go into its causes completes its job but the picture of the Kosi Breach at Navhatta that occurred 25 years ago (5th–6th September 1984) is known and Barh Mukti Abhiyan-Patna, Kosi Mukti Sangharsh Samiti-Supaul and Kosi Pirit Sangharsh Morcha, Saharsa assembles to observe the 25th anniversary of that tragedy at Muradpur-Chandrayan High School, Saharsa on 5th Sept. 2009 and at Vivah Bhawan, Shankar Chowk, Saharsa on the 6th Sept. 2009.
Planning the Disaster—1984 was a bad year as far as floods were concerned. At the national level this year, the terrorists had breached the Bhakhra Canals and, in Bihar, large-scale breaches had occurred in the embankments of the Gandak, the Burhi Gandak, the Kamla and the Mahananda. The eastern embankment of the Kosi was under attack of the river since 1979 below Navhatta, between 81-83 kilometers, but in the month of June this year, the river gave the first shock between 72-73 kilometers. This, however, was promptly repaired. In the month of July, the river became active once again near 81-83 kilometers but prompt undertaking of anti-erosion works resolved the issue. No sooner this work was completed, the river opened another front between 70-72 kilometers, in the month of August. In the beginning of the month, the river was about a kilometer away from the embankment but just towards the end of August, it came very close to the embankment near 71st kilometer and fully eroded the spur there. With the resistance withdrawn, thus, the river was now attacking the embankment directly. The river was tightening its noose over the embankment, on one hand, and the rains were preventing any protective measure to be taken, on the other. Not only the embankment was in a dilapidated condition, all the approaches leading to the embankment were also in the same state of repairs. Boulders in large quantities were needed to protect the embankment but the trucks were finding it very difficult to reach there.
As if that were not sufficient, the non-gazetted employees of the state went on an indefinite strike from 4th September 1984 and that meant that the services of overseers and the drivers of the department were also not available. According to an engineer working at the site those days, this strike had crippled the work of repairs of the embankment. There was no other work going on anywhere and the strikers were eyeing on the Kosi Project and they wanted to ensure that no work is carried out here. They used all the possible tactics to thwart the work and despite all the efforts, the embankment gave way on the night of the 5th September at 21.00hrs. The road to the threatened embankment was in bad shape and in the absence of a good road engineers were facing a lot of difficulty in transporting building materials. They pleaded for a brick soling road to the high officials but that also was not sanctioned. If they had had free access to the places where these materials were so badly needed, they could have averted the accident.’
In fact, the eastern embankment of the Kosi was vulnerable to the attacks of the river since July. Aryawarta, in its editorial of the 5th July 1984, had warned that, ‘….The Kosi embankments, specially the eastern Kosi embankment, are always subject to the threats of breaching because of the maneuvering of the transfers and postings of the engineers. We have seen the devastation caused by the breaches in the embankments of the Gandak and the Mahananda recently. One can only imagine the deluge and devastation that would be caused if there were a breach in the Kosi embankment. There are, at least, half a dozen vulnerable points on the eastern Kosi embankment at the moment, and if proper precautionary measures are not taken, an untoward incident may take place any moment at these points.’
That the embankment was in a precarious state was established towards the end of the month of August. The residents of Hempur sent an SOS message to the district authorities and the voice of requests slowly changed into anger and, later, into a riot like situation. The administration, just because it understands the language of agitation more easily than that of the persuasion and requests, reached Navhatta and Hempur on the 4th September to take a stock of the situation there. The district Magistrate, instead of going back to Saharsa from Hempur, left for Patna. The Divisional Commissioner, Jiya Lal Arya informed the minister of revenue, Lahtan Chaudhary about the impending danger. This place where the embankment was likely to breach was located in the constituency of Lahtan Chaudhary. Both of them toured the area on the 5th September and before they could complete the formality, three fourth of the embankment was already eroded. The District Magistrate returned to Saharsa on the 6th September and by that time the river had completed the job and the embankment was washed away between 75-78 kilometer
After the embankment had breached, it was revealed that the Kosi Control Board had recommended in its meeting of the 13th March 1984 that the embankment should be repaired and strengthened thoroughly in view of the safety and security of 500,000 people of Saharsa. The Board had allocated a sum of Rs. 5 Crores for this work and issued a caution that the suggested works should be completed on war footing. Nothing, however, was done between, 13th March and 2nd September. What followed next is given below.
Sand Wall Slumps Down—The eastern embankment of the Kosi breached near Hempur in the Nauhatta block of Saharsa district on the 5th September 1984, 75 kilometers below the Bhimnagar barrage. The villages just outside the embankment where it had breached namely Kedli Punarwas, Hempur, Purushottampur, Goar Para, and Naulakkha Punarwas were washed away. As the river water came out of the embankment, it got split into four different streams and all these streams converged once again near Teghra, in the Mahishi block, 17 kilometers below Hempur, leading to wiping out of Teghra. The floodwater then slowly got spread over the blocks of Nauhatta, Mahishi, Simri Bakhtiyarpur, Salkhua and Kahara. Backwaters of the Kosi had engulfed some villages in the Supaul district too. The river was flowing now not only within the embankments but also outside them too. It was only the narrow strip of the embankment that could be seen above the water level. The only consolation was that the people who were hit by this surges of water had some premonition of the events to come and had prepared themselves to face the eventuality. However, because they were not used to face such a deluge for a long time, since 1959-after completion of the Kosi embankment, they were greatly inconvenienced.
Many people left their homes in panic for Saharsa and a significant number took shelter on the Saharsa-Mansi rail line. A good number of people underestimated the magnitude of the disaster and left their homes with a hope that would return after a few hours and even left their cattle tied to the pegs, but that was never to be. It took them months to come back to their homes. These cattle died as they could not escape and the nothing was left of the property that was abandoned. Most people rushed to the eastern embankment itself as the remaining embankment was the only high land in their vicinity available for shelter. Villages after villages were settled on this embankment with river water on either side. Rains had its own contribution to add to the misery of the people. Houses were built on the crest of the embankment with all sorts of imaginative building materials that included bamboo, paddy straw, saree, palm leaves, plastic sheets, tarpaulins, chowkis, almirahs and cots etc. Those who could bring their chowkis or charpoys to the embankment had built double storied houses because one could sleep over them, as well as underneath. The cattle were kept on the slopes of the embankment that were also utilized for defecation and a playing field for the children. Around 450,000 people had stayed over the embankment and most of them spent almost six months in that state. The Government reported only 35 casualties in Saharsa while unofficial sources said that this could be anywhere around 200. The death toll could have been much more but the people prepared themselves for the event and managed to wade through the crisis.
Says Pulindra Narayan Singh (52) of village Hempur, Block- Nauhatta, Dist. Saharsa, ‘The embankment gave way in the morning of the 5th September. The place where it breached, village Kedli was located there inside the embankments and outside it, on the east, was the rehabilitation plot of the same village. Thousands of people, mostly Yadavs, resided in this village. It was a very dense settlement with a rice mill. The people were rich and a couple of them had elephants with them. Within a minute, all this was wiped out. As an extension of the Kedli Resettlement site was our village Hempur. There was a shield of thick bamboo plantation and an orchard between the embankment and Hempur. All the debris of Kedli got stuck in the bamboo shrubs and the orchard. Walls and roofs of the houses, wood, tools and equipments of the rice mill, elephants, cows, bullocks and goats- all got stuck in the trees. Before the water could attack our village, it got diverted toward the south. Only filtered water through the orchard fencing reached our village and that too, very slowly. But for these bamboos and the blessings of Godess Bhagwati, I would not have survived to talk to you.’
Piltance of Relief—The Government distributed relief to the embankment victims by distributing wheat at the rate of 2.5 kilogram per adult per week and this supply was never regular. The children below nine years of age were entitled for half the amount. Hand Pipes were provided on the slopes of the embankment for drinking water. Whatever land was available, it was only on these slopes and it did not take much time for the space to get dirty and after a week or so, it was a hell on earth.
Grains were arranged somehow but the real crisis was that of the fuel. For some days and for some adventurous people, floating roofs in the river water acted as fuel but the sustaining source was Karmi (Aquatica Forsk –Ipomoea Reptans L.), an aquatic weed. Its leaves were boiled and utilized for food and the dried stems were used as fuel. In normal years, nobody bothers about the weed. Food was also scarce for the cattle because no supply of fodder could reach Saharsa as it was not accessible easily. The cattle had to be fed with water hyacinth and they were not used to taking it. That led to many diseases in them. Most cattle died because of fodder scarcity and eating un-edible food. Availability of safe drinking water and medicines always remained a problem.
The children and women were the most inconvenienced lot as children had no space left for playing and any laxity towards their movements could be fatal because there was water everywhere. No privacy was available to women to attend to their daily chores. They had to go out on boats for defecation, before dawn and after sunset, in water as no dry land was available anywhere for the purpose. One can only imagine the hardship that would haunt them in case of childbirth. The situation deteriorated further during the winter as the mercury dipped. With water everywhere, it was unusual cold on the embankment and there was no arrangement to combat it. Beddings and covering materials were all swept in the floodwaters and wood was also not available for warming. There used to be quite an activity on the embankment during the winter season as people hardly slept due to the cold. Some fortunate people had, however, received blankets in doles from some voluntary organizations.
Most of the wooden bridges in the areas were swept away or destroyed beyond repairs. The so-called ‘developed network of roads’ was smashed into smithereens and for all practical purposes, the eastern embankment of the Kosi did not exist beyond 75th kilometer from the Bhimnagar barrage. The Mansi-Saharsa rail line was washed away between Koparia and Simri Bakhtiyarpur and the train serviced could be resumed only in December after the necessary repairs were carried out.
Agriculture, the main occupation of the people, had gone to dogs because the Kharif crop drowned and there were little possibilities of the Rabi crop as there was no likelihood of floodwater getting drained out or drying before the sowing season. The big farmers managed to wade through the crisis with the help of the friends and relatives but the small, marginal and the landless farmers were landed into trouble because there was no possibility of getting any employment before the next monsoon crop and this led to mass exodus of the labourers from the area to the places like Nepal, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, and Kolkata etc. Migration in search of employment is not a new phenomenon for the people of this area but it started early and on a mass scale this year. The flood had engulfed 96 Gram Panchayats and 190 villages of Saharsa and Supaul district over an area of 67,000 hectares and had dislodged 4.58 lakh people.
Blame Game Starts—While the people had lost all their material possessions in this tragedy and reduced to paupers, another drama was being enacted elsewhere as to who should be held responsible for the breach. As a matter of fact, the crisis was brewing up between 75-78 kilometers on the eastern embankment since the month of May itself and some protective works were being undertaken there. The Engineer-in Chief of the Irrigation Department had visited the place for inspection but he never said categorically that the embankment was faced with a breach. There was a difference of opinion on the timing of the breach of the embankment. Some people believe that the embankment breached in the night of the 5th September 1984 and the official information of the calamity was given only on the evening of the 6th September and the interim period was utilized to remove the evidences that could fix the responsibility. No district official worth the name was present in the Head Quarter and the people were left to fend for themselves. The mud slinging that is so common to such accidents started almost immediately. It is reported that the Minister of Relief and Rehabilitation resigned from his post assuming the responsibilities of the incident and slackness in the relief and rescue operations but withdrew his resignation later. An Inquiry Committee was also appointed to look into the causes of the accident and it charged some engineers of dereliction of duties and willfully delaying the repair process, despite allocation of funds, and recommended their suspension. The Engineer – in-Chief was also charged of misleading the administration about the safety of the embankment. It was his turn now to resign and subsequently withdraw the resignation. The engineers threatened to go on a strike over the issue of suspension and that also was subsequently withdrawn. The drama of instituting an inquiry, suspension, resignation, threatening calls of strike and its withdrawal continued at different stages till 1985 and the new floods that year wiped out all the impressions of past and the tragedy was forgotten.
There was furor over the payment of Rs. 51 lakh made to various contractors just few days before breaching of the embankment. Some of these contractors were reportedly the relatives of the powerful politicians of the area and the engineers of the Kosi Project. This was a hotly debated issue those days. Engineers, too, dug out many old reports in their defence wherein it was said that the embankments are not the final solution and doubts were raised over the efficacy of these structures in those reports.
There was an attempt to explain it to the people that the effective life span of the embankments was only 25 years and that has been over. The newspapers that were so vocal about construction of Barahkshetra Dam and the dwindling life of the embankments in 1970s, were curiously silent over the issue. The engineers never talked publicly about the Barahkshetra Dam and not a single engineer resigned saying he could not maintain the embankments whose life was over and unless the Barahkshetra Dam was built, as advised by the Kosi Advisory Board in 1974, the flood problem could not be solved and top priority should be accorded to this work.
In the month of March 1985, the Navhatta breach was plugged with the help of retired line and the people returned to their villages, the entire episode was forgotten. Some people, in the mean while, had received some money to repair their houses but that assistance was just a drop in the ocean.
Vidhan Sabha Debates the Issue—Karpoori Thakur, former chief minister of Bihar, raised the issue of the breach in the eastern Kosi embankment in Bihar Vidhan Sabha on the 10th September 1984 in the zero hour and said that, ‘….I am pained to say that after reminding the officers, time and again, this small repair work of the embankment was not done. The result is that the embankment has breached between the 75 to 78 kilometers and almost whole of the Saharsa district is under a sheet of water. The situation is horrifying there and the district administration or the engineers of the Irrigation Department have not done what they should have done in the situation. Rome was burning and Nero was playing his flute and this is what this Government is doing. This Government has lost its credibility to rule the state.’ The request for a statement by the Government was turned by the chair but the debate was resumed on the 13th September.
Jay Prakash Yadav made a scathing attack on the Government in view of the Saharsa tragedy and said, ‘…The people of Saharsa today are crying for help for a match-box, some candles, bleaching powder, medicines and food and the minister from that place is playing with the sentiments of the people. I want to tell the minister that you are responsible for what has happened there. You should resign but you are a thick skinned person, your resignation has got no meaning….Apologizing alone will not help the people.’
Amarendra Mishra MLA charged the Government of his own party that 500,000 persons of six Saharsa blocks of Saharsa have been affected by this breach and they were not given any tarpaulin even after a lapse of 10 days. Some food packets had been dropped but the boats were missing. He maintained that negligence in the repair works led to this tragedy. The officers were slack and there had been a large scale bungling in the name of boulders. He demanded stringent punishment for the erring authorities. Vishwa Nath Gurmaita MLA told the Vidhan Sabha that the incident occurred because all the gates of the barrage were opened simultaneously. The striking workers had left the keys behind and the SDO got all the gates opened. He charged the Superintending Engineer of making a payment of Rs. 51 lakhs to the contractors on the 3rd September and then going on leave on the pretext of ill health. The embankment breached on the 5th September, he said.
Jagannath Mishra, former chief minister of Bihar, who had somehow managed to reach Saharsa, charged his own party Government that, ‘….Nobody from the Government has gone to Saharsa so far. If the people in Saharsa are surviving, they must be saying that we are engulfed in water since ten days and nobody is there to think about us. This is quite worrisome. I will suggest that we must try to look for those surviving there. We must try to save them, whether by boats or a helicopter….. The flood in Saharsa is not a flood, this is unprecedented….we cannot call it a flood, it is a deluge.’ Ganesh Prasad Yadav wanted that the announcement to suspend the collector of Saharsa should be made on the floor of the House, ‘…How dare the collector tell the relief minister that you should not talk rubbish to me.’
The Revenue Minister Lahtan Chaudhary took a defensive stance and said that, ‘…Such people have not been reached with relief. This is not because of inefficiency but because of the situation and I have apologized for that.’
Next day, on the 14th September 1984, Krishnanand Jha gave a statement on the breach of the Kosi embankment in the Vidhan Sabha on behalf of the Government. He said that the Kosi suddenly changed its course and came very close to the embankment between 75.60 to 75.90 kilometers on the 3rd September 1984 and erosion was set in there. The Chief Engineer arrived from Purnea at 9 PM on the night of the 4th September and anti-erosion works were started under his supervision. The Commissioner of Saharsa, the Relief Commissioner of the State, the Revenue Minister, the Engineer-in-Chief of the Irrigation Department had inspected the erosion site in the forenoon of the 5th September but heavy rains set in the afternoon, which prevented the supply of boulders at the work site. The Administration was informed of this development and the embankment gave way at 04.45 hours on the 6th September and it started moving towards the countryside. This water once again cut the eastern Kosi embankment on the 8th September 1984, near Koparia, to rejoin the Kosi. He assured the house of a probe into the breach and informed the members that the charge of paying Rs. 75 lakhs to the contractors was baseless and no such payment had made to anybody.’
As far as the payments made to the contractors is concerned, many newspapers made an allegation that the High Level Technical Committee had found, in December 1983, that the embankment was vulnerable between 58 to 77 kilometer. The Kosi Control Board had recommended a sum of Rs. 5 Crores for the repairs but sanctioned only Rs. 1.34 Crores of rupees. Orders were issued to procure 52,000 tons of boulders and, on the 1st September 1984, the last installment of payment against the repair works was made wide letter no: 3225. All the works that had to be done between the 76th and 77.50th kilometer were completed during 2nd and 4th September 1984 and this also was paid for.
With the breach in the embankment, all the evidence of the works - whether done or not, were destroyed and with this curtains were drawn on this act of the drama. The public, however, was of the opinion that in the event of the breach in the embankment, the payments that were to be made to the contractors and the agencies would be held up and they would be black listed and hence the payments were made to them. The people also felt that even if a fraction of the initiative that was taken in making payments to the contractors was shown in procuring boulders and maintaining the embankment, their troubles would have been far less.
Compensation instead of Relief—It took quite sometime for the Government to initiate relief operations because of the inundated area was reciprocally inaccessible. The current was so swift and the water-spread area was so much that no contacts could be established for a long time to come.
No relief of any kind was available to the breach victims, at least, till the 8th day of the disaster. Whatever help was available, it came through friends and relatives or through the organizations like the Marwari Yuwa Manch or the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS). Official apathy to the problems faced by the people, laxity in the maintenance of the embankments and corruption bred dissention in the minds of the people and they were compelled to organize themselves against the Government. Shivanand Bhai, his wife Sarala Bahan, Amarnath Bhai, Tapeshwar Bhai, Rajendra Jha, Rajendra Yadav, Satya Narayan Prasad and Kamla Bahan of Sarvodaya provided the leadership. They had the support of Prem Bhai of Govindpur in Mirzapur. It was resolved that it was the duty of the Government to protect the embankment, which it failed to perform. Therefore, instead of accepting the doles given by the Government, it was people’s right to claim compensation for the losses incurred by them because this was not a natural flood, it was a man made flood. In this case, the people also knew the men who made it.
People were organized and over 20,000 Satyagrahis demonstrated before the office of the collector of Saharsa on the 19th November 1984. They were demanding, 1) Compensation be paid for the loss of all the damage done to the movable and immovable properties, 2) a commission to be appointed to probe the breach in the embankment and it should be headed by a judge of the Supreme Court or the High Court and those found guilty should be punished, and 3) Hard and Soft Manual Schemes to generate employment should be started immediately. Later, Rural Entitlement and Legal Support Center (REALS), filed a petition in the Supreme Court for the payment of compensation. Advocate Ram Chandra Lal Das had pleaded the case. The Honourable Court in its judgment disposing the case, writ no: 5212 (1985) between Rural Entitlement and Legal Support Centre, Patna versus the Government of Bihar, dated 20th February 1989, wrote that, ‘….We have heard learned counsel for the parties and pursued the pleadings. Counsel for the State of Bihar has agreed to the suggestion made by us that a High Powered Committee shall be set up by the State of Bihar within two months to enquire into the Kosi Embankment Breach in 1984 and the loss sustained on that account to person and property for the purpose of providing adequate compensation. The Committee shall make its report to the State Government within three months from the date of its constitution. The petitioner would be entitled to place its case before the Committee when it is constituted. The writ petition is disposed of accordingly. No costs.’ The bench comprising of Mr. Justice Rang Nath Mishra and Mr. Justice K. Jagannath Shetty passed this judgment. This Committee was not constituted till date. I enquired with a high official of the state about the details and he said that if the Government starts giving compensation this way, it would get bankrupt.’
When the State Government took no action over the judgment of the Supreme Court, REALS filed a contempt petition on the 3rd April 1992. This was not followed up because the motive force behind the people’s struggle, Prem Bhai expired shortly. There has been no action of any kind over this issue ever since.
The people neither got the compensation nor any work other than plugging the breach was taken up by the Government. After the Navhatta breach, the embankment of the Kosi breached at Gandaul and Samani in August 1987, Joginia in Nepal in the month of July 1991 and this was followed by another breach at Kusaha on the 18th August 2008 which engulfed 993 villages of five districts affecting an area of 3.68 lakh hectares and a population of 33 lakhs killing 530 of them. This is a never ending story since Navhatta breach was preceded by breaches at Dalwa (1963), Jamalpur (1968), Bhatania (1971), Bahuarawa (1980). The Government has plugged the breach at Kusaha and has assured people that this embankment would never breach. We all know that this statement is false but are left with no alternative than to believe them till the embankment breaches once again, the location and timing of which has not yet been decided by the river.
(Compiled from the book 'Trapped! Between the Devil and Deep Waters written by 'Dinesh Kumar Mishra)
