‘The river warns us, the government ignores us’

This article was originally published in the People's Archive of Rural India on July 29, 2025.

Early flood warnings offer scant relief, as families in north Bihar's floodplains are left stranded every year-without evacuation plans or adequate relief camps.

The flood alert came on one of his WhatsApp groups, an advisory in Hindi from a non-profit organisation, about water levels rising in the Rato river. Ganesh Safi, 32, was home that September evening, and knew instantly that he had about two hours to safeguard his family and his household essentials.

It had rained heavily in the southern plains of Nepal, the lowland region known as the Terai, about 220 kilometres north of Sarkhandio Bitha, Ganesh's native village in Sursand block of Sitamarhi district in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

Eight months later, on a scorching afternoon in May 2025, resting under the shade of a mango tree, Ganesh recalls how he moved his twin children (a boy and a girl, aged 5), his wife Nagina Devi, 28, two goats and about a quintal of food supplies-wheat, pulses and rice-to his neighbour's concrete house. Unlike his hut, the neighbour's brick and mortar house is built on a raised foundation standing six feet tall, to stay above the floodwaters.

Originating in hilly Terai, the Rato flows through Ganesh's village. When it rains heavily in the upstream region, the water takes about two hours to reach Sarkhandio Bitha.

Ganesh and his family stayed with their neighbour for a couple of days. Did the neighbour welcome the uninvited guests? "Yes, why not?" replies Ganesh. "If neighbours don't help in times of trouble, who will?"

Meanwhile, in his bamboo hut with a thatched roof, floodwaters rose to 3 feet. When the water receded, it left behind a thick coat of mud on the floor and also on everything kept on the floor, including their clay stove and utensils. Ganesh spent a week and Rs.10,000 ($117) to make the hut habitable again-a substantial sum for the landless labourer who earns Rs. 400 a day.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. Ganesh, a resident of Sursand block of Bihar's Sitamarhi district, says, 'I moved my twin children, wife, two goats and a quintal of grains to the concrete house of my neighbour'.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. The Rato river starts from a hill in the Terai and flows through Ganesh's village, where it causes floods if it rains heavily upstream.

The two-hour warning over WhatsApp saved his family, livestock and foodgrains, he acknowledges, as it did for most residents in this village of about 24,000 people. Some moved to National Highway 227, about 250 metres away; others found refuge on a bridge, making it to safety before the Rato inundated the village.

"If we had not got alerts, we would have lost cattle, foodgrains and other belongings," says Ganesh, who belongs to the Dhobi community, categorised as a Scheduled Caste (SC).

*****

In Bihar, floods are an annual calamity. Eighteen per cent of India's total flood-prone area is in Bihar, a state that occupies under 3 per cent of the country's land area. According to the Bihar State Disaster Management Authority, about 73.63 per cent of the state, including most of its northern regions, is prone to flooding.

Eight perennial and 600 seasonal rivers criss-cross Bihar. Of these, the Kosi, Gandak, Bagmati, Kamla-Balan, Mahananda and Ghaghra originate in Nepal or Tibet. The Ganga traverses a 445-km path through the state, while the others flow into the Ganges through an intricate network.

The combined catchment area of these rivers in Bihar is 61,537 sq km. The upstream areas in Nepal lie within the same Ganges river basin. This means that large swathes of this fragile hydrological zone may flood when it rains heavily on either side of the border-29 of Bihar's 38 districts are flood-prone, including 15 officially classified as 'extremely flood prone'.

In a communication to the Ministry of Home Affairs on 23 June 2025, the Bihar Disaster Management Department said 3,662 village panchayats in 27 districts were submerged in the 2024 floods. Nineteen people died; 5.6 million were affected. (Village panchayats or elected councils typically represent a cluster of villages.)

Between 2015 and 2024, floods claimed 1,752 lives and impacted more than 67.6 million people in the state, according to the Bihar state disaster management department.

Photo: Siddharth Adelkar/People's Archive of Rural India - Source: derived from Bihar Disaster Management Department data

Formulated in 1954, independent India's first National Flood Control Policy proposed embankments along many rivers in north Bihar. Starting with the Kosi and then others, embankments were built along 3,732 km of riverbanks in the state, but failed to shrink the area prone to flooding. Writing in the Economic & Political Weekly in 1997, writer and activist Dinesh Mishra-the doyen of water sector experts in Bihar, with four decades' experience working on flood mitigation-had said that Bihar's total flood-prone area had grown from 2.5 million hectares in 1954 to 6.93 million hectares.

Anil Prakash, who led the Ganga Mukti Andolan (Ganga Liberation Movement) in the early 1990s to make rivers tax-free for the fishing community, says, "It is quite clear from the data that embankments failed to control floods."

In the last few years, Prakash has led movements against embankment construction along the Bagmati river in Muzaffarpur district.

"Across the world, and especially in Himalayan rivers which contain high silt, embankments have turned out to be disastrous . Despite this, successive Bihar governments keep constructing them just to help contractors make money so that political parties get funds from them," Prakash says.

As consensus grows among experts that floods cannot be entirely prevented, policy and advocacy have shifted towards loss mitigation, chiefly through timely flood alerts that enable evacuation of people and goods before flood waters breach village thresholds.

Realising the importance of early flood alerts, Google's Flood Forecasting Initiative partnered with the Central Water Commission in 2019 to generate alerts. A Bihar-based non-profit that declined to be named for this piece has sent these flood alerts to 3.6 million residents of 12 flood-prone districts since 2021.

"We have 320 volunteers across 12 districts who send flood alerts during the monsoon," says Amar Kumar Sharma, who is associated with the initiative. "We get alerts from Google's Flood Hub and the Central Water Commission."

Photo: Siddharth Adelkar/People's Archive of Rural India - Source: derived from Bihar Disaster Management Department data

Arun Kumar Mandal, a volunteer with the flood alert service in Supaul, says, "The early flood warnings come to district coordinators. They give the information to volunteers working in gram panchayats, and the volunteers send these to the WhatsApp group formed that include the mukhiya, ward members and the people of the village."

Within 30 minutes of receiving an alert, volunteers send it out via WhatsApp and SMS (short message service), besides also informing key people in person and making public announcements in villages.

The Kosi Navnirman Manch, an NGO working with flood-affected people in north Bihar's Kosi region, runs a WhatsApp group including residents of at least 40 villages. "We get alerts from four sources-National Disaster Response Force, the Nepal Meteorological Department's website, Central Water Commission and the Bihar Water Resources Department website," Mahendra Yadav, who heads the KNM, says.

The Bihar government also sends alerts through local panchayat representatives.

Yet, early alerts have limited impact, for many still fail to protect themselves and their possessions.

Bihar Disaster Management Department's own data says that between 2015 and 2024 only 4.652 million people were evacuated during floods which is just 6.94 per cent of total flood affected population (67.6 million).

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. A boat ferries people in the Kosi river. The Kosi was the first river to be embanked, but lakhs of people face the fury of annual floods despite the embankments.

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"Hum logon ko soochna toh milti hai baadh ki, lekin hum log nikal kar jayenge kahan? Koi vyavastha hi nahi rahti hai. Kahan rahat shivir bana hai yeh bhi nahi pata chalta hai [We get alerts about a coming flood, but where will we go? No arrangement is made. We don't even get to know where relief camps are set up]," says 28-year-old Kanchan Kumari, who has witnessed multiple floods since her childhood.

It's a warm summer evening, and Kanchan, a resident of Nirmali village in Ghuran panchayat under Supaul district's Sadar block, is standing in the courtyard of her bamboo and thatch hut.

Nirmali, a village of around 12,000 people (Census 2011), lies nestled between two streams of the Kosi river, enclosed by embankments. The September-October 2024 flood wreaked havoc here, says Kanchan. Eight months later, the village walls still bear mud stains left by the flood.

The problem with embanking meandering rivers, as more and more people in Bihar are finding, is identifying the appropriate location for the embankment walls. Placed far enough from the main channel to enclose at least a portion of the floodplains, they trap entire villages, leaving them more vulnerable to flooding than before.

This problem is embodied most clearly along the Kosi river, which comes down from the Himalayas and flows 260 km in Bihar before joining the Ganga. Thousands of people live in habitations located within its embankments, and they face worsening floods every year.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. 'At 12 o'clock in the night, I was so scared that I felt goosebumps. It seemed that we would not be able to survive,' says Kanchan Kumari, speaking of the floods of 2024. She is a resident of Nirmali, a village nestled between two streams of the Kosi river, enclosed by embankments.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. Kanchan is a member of the WhatsApp group of her panchayat and she regularly gets alerts during the monsoon, but not government help.

A few hours after they received the alert, flood water from the Kosi began to spread in the village. Between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., water reached their farms, and then their huts. "We sat on the chowki [bedstead] with 10-12 litres of water and 10-15 kilos of rice and pulses," she says.

The water rose fast. By midnight, there was water on the chowki. In the pitch black of night, they could hear it rushing past. "I had goosebumps, it was so scary," Kanchan recalls. "It seemed that we would not survive, because the water was rising constantly."

Kanchan placed another chowki over the first one and clambered on top, with her two children and her husband, Sanjay Yadav, 32.

Before it began to subside, the flood water was barely four inches below the second chowki. Barefoot, Kanchan clutched the emergency torch she always keeps by her side at night. It was 48 hours before the water drained out entirely.

For another three days, the family spent most of their time on the stacked chowkis, until their feet stopped getting stuck in the wet mud every time they tried to walk on the floor. Once the floor had dried and hardened, they estimated their losses.

All their food grains were lost. "Four hundred kilos of grain rotted, it was a loss of 50,000 rupees," Kanchan says. A few weeks later, her husband Sanjay left for Delhi, forced to look for work as a labourer. The Yadavs belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), a vital socio-political demographic segment in the state.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. Kanchan has witnessed multiple floods since her childhood.

Jairam Sah, 60, another resident of Nirmali, took shelter on the thatched roof of his hut with his wife Rekha Devi, 55, and their 15-year-old son. They lost nearly 7 quintals of food grains to the swirling flood waters.

The Sahs belong to the Teli caste, one of Bihar's Extremely Backward Classes (EBC), a sub-category among the OBCs, comprising caste groups that are more disadvantaged than OBCs by educational and socio-economic parameters.

The Sahs' elder son, 22, is a migrant worker in Delhi, more than 1,200 km away. Their only daughter is married.

"When the water entered the home, four quintals of wheat, 50 kilos of moongdal, 80 kilos of masoor dal and two quintals of peas were ruined. The wheat grew sprouts," he says.

He brings out a handful of peas that turned blackish from being soaked in flood water. A bag of wheat is muddy. "Even the cattle don't eat these grains," he says. Ask Jairam why he couldn't save the grain stock, and he gets angry. "Apna jaan ka thikana nahi tha, anaaj kahan rakhte? [We were not sure of our lives, where would we keep the food grains?]"

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. Jairam Sah, another resident of Nirmali, took shelter on the thatched roof of his hut with his wife Rekha Devi and their teenaged son during the flood.

The flood alert did reach him before the flood waters. "Mukhiya announce karke bataya tha ki jitna bhi Kosi belt ka aadmi hai, ghar chhodkar bahar nikal jaye. Lekin hum logon ke paas us samay koi sarkari naav nahi tha [The panchayat chief announced that everyone from the Kosi belt should leave their homes, but we did not have access to a government boat at that time]," he says. "Within five hours, the water level reached three or four feet. We had no means (to reach a safe place). So we sat on the thatched roof."

Afraid of slipping off the rundown roof, they did not sleep a wink. "There were snakes too, which would move in the water and climb on to the thatch to save themselves," he remembers. "We had to chase them away."

The three spent two days on the roof, with no food or water. "We people of Kosi belt always keep five-ten kilos of chiwda [flattened rice] with us during the rains, but even that got spoiled in the floods," Jairam says. "In all the time we spent on the roof, neither any government boat nor any government official came."

The Bihar state government's compensation for flood victims covers only destroyed houses and standing crops, not food grain stocks at home. Kanchan Kumari and Jairam Sah both confirm that they received no compensation for the grain they lost to the flood.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. Peas stored by Jairam turned black from being soaked by flood water. He lost seven quintals of food grains in the 2024 floods.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. 'Even cattle don't eat these ruined grains,' he says.

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On its own, getting an alert about an impending flood is not enough, say victims, who agree that the local administration must also arrange to temporarily relocate the population likely to be affected.

In a survey conducted in February, the Kosi Navnirman Manch asked 1,081 families if they had prior information about the flood, and what they did with that information. Yadav, who heads the organisation, says of 760 families who said they did indeed have prior information about the flood, only 357 reached safer places. Only 14 families reached a government relief camp. As many as 298 families sheltered on the embankments, while 55 families said they sought shelter in relatives' homes.

"I have been seeing the floods year after year," says Yadav. "Affected people have no means to reach safe places." This is despite the fact that the Bihar Disaster Management Department's protocols mandate boats wherever floods become severe.

Rajendra Yadav, 65, a former panchayat representative and a member of a Whatsapp group run by KNM in Supaul, says the government's flood preparedness looks impressive only on paper.

"On paper there is provision of boats for every flood-prone panchayat but during a flood you will not find a single boat. People are left to suffer the worst fate," says Rajendra.

Of 65 families in his village, not a single family was rescued from their chowkis or thatched roofs during the 2024 floods.

Without government aid, only those who have specific information about safe places near their homes or who have their own boats reach places where they can shelter.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. Kamlesh Sharma of Gonwa village says no government help reached them during the flood.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. He is is on a WhatsApp group where flood alerts are sent.

Kamlesh Sharma of Gonwa village of Gopalpur Shire panchayat in Supaul district is on a WhatsApp group where flood alerts are sent. He says he received multiple alerts one day in September 2024 warning that the waters of the Kosi river would rise by evening, causing heavy flooding in the region. As soon as he got the alert, he made arrangements to keep 10 quintals of food grains safe.

He first stacked five bricks under each leg of the chowki in his house, and put his sacks of food grains on it. The water entered his home around 4 p.m. "By the time I finished arranging the food grains, water had already entered the home," the 51-year-old says.

Kamlesh, a Chaupal by caste [a Scheduled Caste], put his two grandchildren and two nieces, who were living with him at the time, into his boat and ferried them to a teela [a high place built by the government] 400 metres away. Next, he took his wife Chandrakala Devi, 45, to safety at a relative's brick and mortar house half a kilometre away.

By the time he returned for their three buffaloes, he says, the water level had reached five feet. "I took the ropes of the buffaloes and started swimming. The buffaloes followed. I took them to the relative's house where my wife was. Then I returned to look after the food grains with my son."

His son, 21, slept on the sacks of foodgrains stacked on top of the chowki, while Kamlesh slept in the boat."We spent 24 hours this way. No government help reached us."

Kamlesh is a small holder who owns 2.5 acres of agricultural land. He is among the fortunate few who have a boat, but it comes at a cost. A five-foot boat costs Rs. 20,000 and needs annual maintenance worth Rs. 2,000. Of the 500 families in the village, barely 25-30 have boats, according to Kamlesh.

Farmer Pramod Yadav, 40, who lives in Musaharnia village, about five km from Gonwa, had to survive the flood on his bamboo and thatch roof with his father, wife and three children despite having received early flood alerts.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India. Pramod Yadav, resident of Musaharnia village in Supaul, says that he had to survive on a bamboo and thatch roof with his family despite knowing about the flood in advance.

"Pani bahut teji se badha...hum log jate to jate kahan, isliye chhappad par baithe rahe. Shukr tha ki barish nahi hui warna hum log bach nahi pate [The water rose very fast. Where would we go? So we sat on the thatch. Fortunately, it did not rain, otherwise we would not have been able to survive]," he says.

They spent two days without food or water, shooing away snakes at night.

He lost 12 quintals of grain to the floods. "We had stocked food grains for a whole year, and all of it was lost. Even our clothes were washed away in the flood. We had to take a 30,000-rupees loan to buy grains and clothes."

None of the 65 homes in Pramod's village reached a safe place before the flood.

He asks, "Kaise nikalte log? Sarkari naav ki bahali to sirf paper par nikalta hai….aur hum logon ke paas itna paisa nahi hai ki apna naav rakhein [How would people get out? Government boats are deputed only on paper… And we don't have enough money to buy our own boat]."

Supaul's district magistrate Sawan Kumar said the administration hires more than 200 boats during the monsoon, and claimed there were other challenges in evacuating people. "People believe that if they leave their houses they may not receive financial assistance from the government, so they deliberately don't go to safer places," he said. "Secondly, when there is heavy flow of floodwater, boats and even steamers don't work," he added.

*****

Flood expert Dinesh Mishra says flood alerts alone cannot save people. "If flood water enters villages then people need government boats to reach safer places." Mishra has worked on the issue of floods in Bihar since 1984, and has written several books on Bihar's rivers and floods.

Photo: Shah Faisal/People's Archive of Rural India

In the last 10 years, 1,752 people died and 67.6 million people have been affected by floods

"In the Kosi belt, villages are situated in the middle of two or three streams of the Kosi river, so for them the situation remains more difficult because they have to cross streams and walk at least five kilometres to reach embankments. How will they reach there without government assistance?" asks the 80-year-old expert.

To minimise losses, the government should shift residents of flood-prone areas before a flood, he says.

Flood victims, however, have little faith in the government.

Bitterly, Jairam Sah says, "Hum logon ko kya ummid rahega sarkar se? [What can we expect from the government?] Even relief material from the government is siphoned off by officials. Whatever is left, they throw at us like things are thrown in front of dogs."

This story is produced with support from Internews's Earth Journalism Network.