Losing Ground

At the ferry ghat, Sudhir Das does good business at his tea stall catering to passengers from Jharkhand8217;s Rajmahal. In last ten years, he had to rebuild his shanty almost every year. Now he keeps some money 8220;separately8221; and doesn8217;t complain anymore.

Most of these people have stopped complaining. Here, in the last three decades, floods and erosion have affected over 500 sq km of land and about 20 lakh people, particularly in 40 village panchayats in Kaliachak-I 038; II, Manikchak and English Bazaar block. About 80 thousand landless flood affected refugees apart, another three lakh people have lost their livelihoods. During 1999-2005 in Kaliachak II, an entire mouja8212;Kakri Bandha Jhaubana8212; disappeared with its 25 villages.

The erosion here is a monsoon phenomenon and occurs before and after the floods. In September 2003, irrigation department8217;s Ganga Bhavan was swallowed by the river. Within days, several villages in Panchanandapur lost ground. When the Ganga Bhavan was constructed in 1975, the river flowed 5 km away. The changing course of the Ganga has posed a serious threat even to the Farakka Barrage. The steady encroachment of the river towards left bank may outflank the barrage and open a new course through the Kalindri-Mahananda route.

AFTER the loss of eight embankments in as many years, irrigation engineers wanted to build the ninth embankment at a certain distance from the river so that erosion can8217;t reach it in a few years. But few villages on the bank were ready to be left at the riverside of the proposed embankment and political pressure stalled the plan. 8216;8216;As a result, more than 350 sq km8212;including the Maldah town8212;lies open to flood waters,8217;8217; says Pundarikaksha Roy, who served as the executive engineer at Maldah.

But the locals are more at ease with floods than erosion. 8216;8216;Floods leave better soil but erosion just eats it away,8217;8217; explains Motilal Das at Panchanandapur, an area that suffered most. While the problem of erosion here has been reported since the early 1960s, an official report notes 8216;8216;the problem manifested itself to forcible magnitude during the post-Farakka condition8217;8217;.

But construction of a 27-km-long embankment to make Bhutni Diara 8212; a 60 sq km shoal 8212; habitable in the early 70s proved disastrous. 8216;8216;One can debate the impact Farakka has on erosion but not the adverse impact of Bhutni embankment in the middle of the river. I don8217;t think such thoughtless intervention has taken place anywhere else in the world. It killed river Koshi8217;s balancing current and made the Ganga hit the left bank,8217;8217; says Roy.

The Ganga carries an average silt load of 33 lakh tonnes annually. This obstructs the flow of the river and deflects the current. The river is no longer co-axial to the barrage and concentrates more towards the left bank. This causes swelling of water during the peak of the monsoon. The river strikes the hard outliers of Rajmahal hills and the deflected flow hits opposite bank with immense force.

The challenge of taming the river is to make the flow co-axial to the barrage. Along Panchanandapur, the river now flows in three channels. While 70 per cent of the discharge flows through the left channel, the other two share 15 pc each. Adequate deepening of the central channel will serve to diverge a major part of this flow from the left to the middle course. 8216;8216;The deepening of the central channel should go up to 10m to equal the average depth of the left channel,8217;8217; says AK Singh, irrigation engineer, Malda.

In July, 2004, the Centre decided to constitute a joint working committee with the state to propose a plan of action and finalise grants to check erosion. Union Water Resources Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said that based on the working plan proposed by the group, the Planning Commission would be asked to release money within October.

Releasing Rs 51 crore for short term plans, he said a mid-to-long term project was being envisaged to dredge and slow down the river on a co-axial route between Rajmahal and Farakka.

But there has been little action on ground. The jurisdiction of Farakka Barrage Project has been extended recently up to Rajmahal in the upstream 40 km and up to Jalangi in downstream 80 km to undertake anti-erosion work. But erosion continues: Shimultala, just 2 km upstream from Farakka, is fast losing ground this week.

BETWEEN 1977 and 2001, Rs 206.83 crores was spent in anti-erosion work. These expensive engineering measures did not help check erosion, rather intensity of erosion increased in the upstream of the protected stretch.

The Pritam Singh and Keshkar panels were constituted in 1980 and 1996, respectively, to identify the causes of the recurring erosion and floods. Considering the huge expenditure, the committees reported that erosion-control work for the entire stretch would not be cost-effective and should be restricted to absolutely essential pockets to protect any national assets. The total cost of short and long term measures was estimated to be Rs.9.27 billion.

Comptroller 038; Auditor General of India, in his Report for the year ending in March 1999, observed: 8216;8216;Implementation of anti-erosion scheme suffered all through8230;Disregard of the recommendation of the Experts8217; Committee, absence of master plan, delayed tendering, non-testing of soil8230; hasty execution8230;appointment of large number of small contractors and work during full monsoon in unfavorable weather condition resulted in frequent and repeated failure of the work leading to wasteful and unfruitful expenditure.8217;8217;

For the victims at Manikchak, these figures don8217;t make sense. Since the government doesn8217;t consider erosion a natural calamity like floods or earthquake, there is never enough funds for their rehabilitation. If these ad hoc attempts at bank protection only waste public money8212; argue many8212;what about reviving a 1999 irrigation department report? If the Ganga is allowed to swing freely, as was proposed by the report, money allotted for the protection work can be utilised for their rehabilitation.