Sitapur/Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh
Standing on an elevated land which he calls bandh, Akbar Ali, a 55-year-old paddy farmer from Akhri village in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district stared at his agricultural field which has been submerged in waist-deep waters for more than a month now.
“It’s all gone. I had invested about Rs 50,000 on sowing paddy on my seven bighas [1.25 hectares] of land. Five bighas of paddy are rotten now. I just hope I can harvest some paddy for my family now. My hopes of getting a profit this year are completely washed away by the floods,” Ali told Gaon Connection.
The farmer recalled that floods were not so devastating a decade ago when there was no bandh in his village.
“The flooding was not so destructive till 2013. Then, the authorities built this bandh and our lands were caught between the Ghaghra river and the bandh. Now the flooding in this area is getting more destructive every year. The water which used to be knee-deep earlier is now more than waist-deep. We fear that our children might drown in the flood waters,” Ali complained.
The 55-year-old farmer is amongst thousands of rural residents in the districts of Sitapur and Barabanki who are forced to live on top of the embankments which are built to safeguard a much larger population from floods. These villagers spend more than three months [July to September] on the embankment. Makeshift huts made of tarpaulin are set up on the embankment.
Akbar Ali, a 55-year-old paddy farmer from Akhri village in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district.
Shashi Kant, a Barabanki-based executive engineer in the Irrigation and Water Resources Department informed Gaon Connection that the construction of the embankment where Ali lives began in 2013 and was completed in 2018.
“The embankment is basically an elevated stretch along the Ghaghra river. It is 54.4 kilometres long and passes through Sitapur and the neighbouring Barabanki district,” Shashi Kant said.
The construction of the embankment was necessitated by the tendency of the Ghaghra river to cause severe floods in the terai regions of Uttar Pradesh.
The farmers recalled that floods were not so devastating a decade ago when there was no bandh in his village.
The 1,080 kilometres-long Ghaghra originates in Himalayan mountains in Tibet and passes through Nepal before reaching the northern plains in India. In Uttar Pradesh, Ghaghra flows through Ambedkar Nagar, Faizabad, Ayodhya, Azamgarh, Barabanki, Basti, Ballia, Bahraich, Deoria, Gonda, Gorakhpur, Sant Kabir Nagar, Lakhimpur Kheri, Mau, and Sitapur. It meets the Ganges at Revelganj in Bihar.
As per a research paper published in the European Geosciences Union which is a Munich-based non-profit, the Ghaghra river is one of the highest discharge-carrying tributaries of the Ganga river.
“Despite being severely affected by floods each year, flood frequencies of the Ghaghra river are poorly understood, making it one of the least studied river basins in the Ganga basin,” the research paper titled Exploring stage-based flood frequency analysis for flood inundation mapping noted.
Women, children worst affected
Kamla Devi, a rural resident of Belhari village has been living on top of the portion of embankment which passes through the Barabanki district.
“I have been living here since July. We women have to work a lot whenever the flood water enters our house. Entire choolha chauka [kitchen] has to be shifted to the bandh. This year, the water entered our houses at night. We had to protect our belongings. I lost many of my utensils in the flood,” Devi told Gaon Connection.
Bitana Devi, a 65-year-old shared that the biggest trouble is to safeguard the cereals in the kitchen.
Also Read: The man who owns 435,000 sq ft of land may not have rice to eat this year
Kamla Devi, a rural resident of Belhari village has been living on top of the portion of embankment which passes through the Barabanki district.
“Whenever we see the water entering the village, we rush to protect the grains because the government’s relief measures take time to reach us and we have to be dependent on our own supplies to survive the flood,” she told Gaon Connection.
Also, the difficulty of students to reach their primary schools increases multifold during July-September.
Sooraj, a nine-year-old resident of Niranjanpurva village in Barabanki, talked about his fears about going to school by boat.
“I am afraid of water. I don’t like to go to school by boat as it shakes a lot and I fear getting drowned. Often, I also get late in reaching school,” he told Gaon Connection.
Fareed Mahfooz Kidwai, the local legislator representing Ramnagar sub-division of the Barabanki district told Gaon Connection that he has asked the concerned authorities to compensate the farmers for the loss of their lands.
“Land will be allotted to those who have lost it in the flood. Also, I am getting a bridge built in Hetampur to ensure easy access to roads. There are entire villages that have been washed away in the floods. It is expected that the administration will soon provide them alternative settlement,” Kidwai told Gaon Connection.
Auditoria for temporary settlement
It is learnt that the district administration in Barabanki is about to construct three auditoria situated at a distance of almost four kilometres from the embankment. These buildings will be equipped with toilets and tap water.
“These villagers who live on the embankment in temporary settlements will have a roof over their heads in the next monsoon season. The district magistrate has sent a proposal for the construction of three auditoria at Hetmapur and Parvatpur and the construction will begin once the proposal is sanctioned,” Anurag Singh, the sub-divisional magistrate in Ramnagar told the press today on August 21.
