LUCKNOW – More than three million people in northern India have been affected by floods that have washed away homes, swept through holy sites and damaged crops as the authorities step up efforts to contain the damage.
Heavy monsoon rains have swelled mighty Himalayan rivers, which broke their banks in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand.
The waters have ravaged 500,000 hectares of farmland in Uttar Pradesh, the top cane-growing state, prompting the government to cut by around one-tenth its sugar output projections for the harvest season beginning in October.
People waded through chest-deep water, travelled on bullock carts or in boats to reach safer areas, carrying children and household belongings in their hands and on their heads. In relief camps, they complained of a lack of food and medicines.
In Uttarakhand, where the army was called in after the Hindu holy river, the Ganges, rose to near danger level by the sacred town of Haridwar, 500,000 people were affected by the floods, said Mahendra Negi, a disaster management centre official.
“They [army] are actively providing medicines, shifting people to safer grounds and conducting repairs of small stretches of roads,” said Colonel S Om Singh, the army spokesman.
On Tuesday, Sonia Gandhi, the chief of the ruling Congress Party, flew over the submerged districts and asked prime minister Manmohan Singh to offer liberal financial aid to the affected states, the party said in a statement.
Unicef said 1.7 million people have been affected in Uttar Pradesh and one million in Bihar. Both are poor states and Uttar Pradesh is also the most populous with 190 million citizens.
More than 300,000 people were forced out of their homes.
“It is quite concerning. The number of affected people [in Uttar Pradesh] could rise to two million,” said Amit Mehrotra, Unicef emergency programmes officer in the state told Reuters.
“This flood is worse than [the] 2007 floods.”
Sugar industry officials said the floods would not alter the supply scene in India, the world’s top consumer and second-largest producer of sugar.
The production loss would be made up by other states and by stocks in warehouses, they said.
– (Reuters)