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Millions Are Displaced by Floods in
India

Diptendu Dutta/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Villagers navigated floodwaters on Friday in Jankipur, India.
Aid workers said the official death toll, currently at 12, was low. An
antipoverty agency estimated that 2,000 people had died.

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By HEATHER
TIMMONS and HARI KUMAR

Published: August 29, 2008

NEW DELHI — Millions of farmers and their families may be displaced for
months after severe floods in northern India
wiped out crops and homes, leaving hundreds of villages under several feet of
water.

The Kosi River in Bihar, one of India’s poorest and most populous states,
jumped its banks this week after a dam burst in bordering Nepal, causing the
worst floods in the area in 50 years.

Rescue efforts continued on Friday, and boats were dispatched and trains
mobilized to find and move millions who have been left stranded by the rising
waters. More than 2.1 million people and over 394 square miles have been
affected by the flooding, the Bihar government said on Friday. About a quarter
of a million people have been evacuated.

Evacuees may not be able to return to their homes, if those homes still
exist, until fall, state government officials said. “This water will remain for
some time,” said Devi Rajak, the chief engineer for Bihar’s water resource
department. “It may start decreasing in September depending upon upstream
discharge.”

The breach in the dam that caused the flooding is eight miles inside Nepal,
he said, and therefore difficult to gain access to and fix. “We are facing labor
problems, law and order problems, and logistics problems,” he said.

The Nepalese government said that work to fix the break was under way, and
that its officials were cooperating with the Indian government. The river has
flooded its banks in Nepal as well, displacing tens of thousands of people.

About a quarter of a million homes in India have already been destroyed by
the floods, Indian officials say.

The official death toll from the flooding was set at 12 by the Bihar
government, but aid workers and people in the area said that number was low, in
part because access to the area to assess the damage and recover bodies is
limited. ActionAid, an anti-poverty agency based in South Africa, estimates that
2,000 people have died and that thousands more are missing.

“We are helpless,” Rajiv Kumar Singh, 36, said in a telephone interview from
Singheshwar, a village in the flooded Madhepura district of Bihar. Some people
have been washed away as their families watched, he said, and survivors have
been living for days on the roadside, in government offices or in schools. “This
whole area is under three or four feet of water,” he said, adding that fevers
and diarrhea were spreading. “There is only one doctor here, and he cannot cater
to all the people,” he said.

Kamlesh Prasad Singh, 50, a farmer from the village of Patori in the
Madhepura district, said in a telephone interview that his village was full of
water four or five feet deep. “I left my home, my five cattle and my six acres
of rice fields behind,” he said. “I am completely ruined.”

Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh declared the situation a “national calamity” on Thursday and said the
government had earmarked about $230 million in aid for the region.

Water continued to flow into new areas on Friday, and helicopters, hundreds
of military boats and thousands of enlisted personnel were picking up stranded
people.

Trains full of supplies were being sent from New Delhi to assist and
transport evacuees. The situation is expected to worsen over the weekend, with
meteorologists predicting heavy rain in the region.

More Articles in World
» A version of this article appeared in print on August 30, 2008, on
page A9 of the New York edition.

Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Times for less than
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Past Coverage

WORLD
BRIEFING | ASIA; India: 120,000 Evacuated From
Flooding (August 29, 2008)

MALINAGAR
JOURNAL; After the Deluge, the Painful Reality of
Deprivation (August 22, 2007)

Warming
Threatens Farms In India, U.N. Official Says (August 8, 2007)

South
Asia Grapples With Results Of Flooding (August 5,
2007)

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