Three weeks after the region's worst floods in 50 years, tens of thousands of homeless in Bihar state face a battle for survival
TENS OF THOUSANDS of poor people rendered homeless by floods in India's eastern Bihar state now face an even bigger challenge: that of survival. At present they all face a desolate future following the worst floods to ravage the underdeveloped state in 50 years, triggered after the Kosi river, swollen by heavy monsoon rains, breached its defences upstream in neighbouring Nepal and changed course after more than two centuries, turning 14 of Bihar's 37 districts into a virtual lake.
Flowing down from the Himalayas, the Kosi, better known as "Bihar's sorrow", is widely feared by locals for the widespread devastation it has periodically wreaked over centuries.
Thousands of its victims remain huddled together in hundreds of rudimentary and unsanitary refugee camps that have emerged as their only hope after losing everything to the flood that erupted on August 18th and still continues its destruction in many areas.
With a stoic resignation common to most Indian rural communities, they cling to one another for companionship and security. Most believe that their collective karma has let them down. Having survived the raging torrents, some by clinging for days onto trees and others by clambering atop concrete rooftops before being rescued in dangerously overcrowded boats, their only priority at present is food and water.
In one such government-run camp at Sursar, similar to hundreds of others spread across north-east Bihar, chaos prevails at mealtimes with thousands of starving evacuees jostling for a morsel of food or a sip of fresh water. Invariably, the women and children get ejected from the desperate scrum; the lucky ones end up hungry and listless, others emerge injured, trampled in a savage melee that borders on the unreal.
"We lost everything to the flood. Now we are losing our dignity," Mohammad Saleem (47), of Chanderpur-Bhangha village in northern Bihar, says.
At many such encampments the feeble, especially children, attach themselves to news reporters, certain that their mobility and access to officialdom equals a meal ticket. Some are not disappointed.
Not far from these "organised" camps - run by the State authorities and the Indian military - are the even more crowded ad hoc ones that have sprung up on high ground and along elevated rail tracks. With nothing but scraps of cloth as protection against the cold fury of the swirling waters around them, people scavenge whatever little they can to somehow survive.
The less fortunate among them continue to drink muddy water and eat plants and grass to survive, fervently hoping that relief agencies or military personnel pressed into relief work will appear miraculously and bring them succour. Sadly, their optimism remains misplaced.
Flood victims beg for food from passing vehicles while others, driven to desperation, have raided warehouses, looting food, water and other essentials.
"I have not eaten for days, please give me food," pleads 10-year-old Babloo, who survived the raging waters by climbing onto his family's buffaloes for hours and crossing submerged villages before reaching a makeshift camp along a highway. Both his parents had been swept away a day earlier.
Like Babloo, many others have been lying in camps near open toilets and cattle saved from floods, rendering them vulnerable to infections and diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera in the absence of clean drinking water and a hygienic environment.
"We are deeply concerned for children, women and lactating mothers and their needs," Mukesh Puri, a senior Unicef official co-ordinating aid operations in Bihar, says.
Home to 90 million people, Bihar is perhaps India's poorest, most backward, corrupt and maladministered province. According to Unicef, nearly 56 per cent of its young children are malnourished, far higher than the 43 per cent national average.
State officials concede that rescue and relief operations have been completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tragedy, even though flooding is an annual phenomenon across Bihar.
It doesn't help that more than 4,000 military officers and soldiers, equipped with boats and helicopters, were made to wait for six days in the state capital Patna before they were deployed by the provincial government on relief and rescue operations. Even then, they remained largely clueless, as there were no administrative officials to guide them.
Ironically, repeated advance warnings of the impending disaster days before it struck were ignored by an apathetic bureaucracy; the officer responsible for responding to them has since been demoted and a departmental inquiry instituted against him.
BESIDES PREDICTABLE food shortages and inadequate rescue facilities such as boats and suitable shelters, there still is no facility almost three weeks later to help trace the missing, and no trauma centres to counsel the homeless.
No international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are present because, as in previous situations, India has refused them access, confident of its own management abilities.
"The prime minister came here and called it a national tragedy. If this is how our country reacts to this calamity, then it is just a cruel joke on us," says Rishi Yadav, who had reached a rudimentary relief camp after wading an entire morning through waist-deep water.
Television networks broadcast scenes of marooned people battling one another to clamber onto rescue boats and of parents abandoning their children in a bid to survive the floods that have driven over 2.6 million people from their homes, destroyed over 250,000 acres of farmland and killed at least 100 people.
Local NGOs, however, estimate the number of fatalities to be around 2,000, a number that can only be confirmed once the flood waters recede, since many people, especially women, children and the elderly, are still missing.
"Dear friend, this is perhaps my last message to you, the battery of my mobile phone is low and I am waiting to die as no one has come to rescue me," reads a desperate message received by Anupam Bhattacharya of Purnea district. Anxious relatives scour relief camps looking for their loved ones with little or no hope of tracing anyone in the pandemonium that prevails.
As of last Friday, almost two weeks after the flood erupted, state officials said that between 60,000 and 80,000 people still needed rescuing from the worst-affected regions, a figure NGOs dispute, claiming the numbers marooned were around 500,000.
A large number of victims had opted to sit out the flood on the roofs of their submerged homes rather than run the humiliating gauntlet of relief camps, where conditions for over 350,000 victims are wretched and fast deteriorating. Tensions have been running high over food and drinking water shortages, resulting in violence, while the danger of an epidemic is always present.
Teams of civil and military doctors and paramedics working round the clock have been simply overwhelmed by the crush of refugees and no reserves are available.
"There is a gap between the demand and supply of relief material," senior relief official Amrit Prataya admits. "We are trying to bridge this gap," he maintains, but offers no concrete proposal.
Bihar's abject misery and misfortune, however, provides no immunity against its invidious and unbelievable caste divisions. Aid agencies say thousands of Bihar's "untouchables" or Dalits, at the bottom end of the Hindu caste system, are not only the last to be rescued in many instances but also receive the smallest quantity of rations in evacuee camps.
"We have seen that, in districts like Supaul and Madhepura, boats rescuing people either take the lowest castes last or do not take them at all," Anuradha Maharishi of Save the Children says.
Maharishi also says there are instances where Dalits are not getting adequate quantities to eat while higher castes are being fed well. "It is unacceptable but it is a fact out there," she says, echoing other volunteers who term the prejudice "relief discrimination".
"The administration functions through village headmen who are mostly from the upper castes and care more for their own," Gopal Rishideo, a Dalit from Gwalpada, says. "We have nothing. Even the snails we could have survived on have been carried away by the flood."
Ram Naresh, another Dalit, claims that boatmen had demanded a bribe for a ride to safety. "Our lives meant nothing to them because we are poor and low caste," he says.
"It is as if we do not count," Kamal Kant, another Dalit, says bitterly. "The well-to-do got away in boats when the first waves lashed our village. The boats never came back." The authorities, predictably, deny there is discrimination. "We have not received any complaints," said Amrit, which is not surprising as none by a Dalit would ever be recorded or even get a hearing in caste-conscious Bihar.
IN HINDUISM'S ANCIENT, hierarchical system, the highest or priestly class are the Brahmins while the lowest, manual labourers are the Sudras. In between are the Kshatriyas or warriors and the Vaishyas or traders below them.
Existing outside the caste system are the Untouchables, the outcasts traditionally associated with "unclean" jobs such as scavenging or cleaning toilets. They were called Harijans or children of God by Mahatma Gandhi who worked for their economic and social betterment, but later they came to be known as Dalits.
Bihar's Dalits, more than in any other state, continue to be treated like pariahs, forced to live in ghettos. Attempts by them to drink water at public wells or pray in temples in upper-caste rural areas lead even today to beatings, ostracism or other forms of public humiliation, bordering on inhuman.
Dalit women are often raped publicly in villages and small towns by upper-caste men to keep them "in their place"; such instances invariably go unpunished and unreported.
But amidst the adversity and misery there emerge minor instances of muted joy. Shopkeeper Manoj Kumar Yadav's family, who have lost everything to the flood - their house, livelihood and all worldly belongings - have gained a son.
His wife Sangeeta, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy when the flood struck and was forced to wade exhausted through waist-deep turbulent waters, gave birth to a baby boy on a small patch of dry land surrounded by surging water. An elated Sangeeta propitiously named him Krishna after the Hindu god, the embodiment of love and divine joy, the destroyer of all pain and sin.
Huddled in a Hindu temple in Purnea district 220km north-east of Patna, Yadav says that Krishna's arrival in adverse conditions has given the family hope, a reason to celebrate life and look ahead.
But, like many others, he remains worried about the future.
"We have lost everything. What will we do, where will we go? We need to wait and see how they [the government] plan to rehabilitate us," baby Krishna's grandmother says, disconsolately. "Nothing is left."