This girl’s parents lived through flood, died waiting for relief

Once the waters subsided, Ragini’s parents joined the wait for relief. No supplies came their way.

They scouted for work but in a village where everyone was struggling, no one wanted to part with money.

Phoolo Devi was the first to go. She fell ill and died, the villagers are convinced that it was hunger that killed her.

Ratawara’s Anjani Kumar Srivastava recalls how they had even approached the panchayat secretary for relief but ‘‘nothing happened.’’

After the mother, the father. Nandkishore died in December. Today, Ragini and her grandmother feed on leftovers or whatever people hand them.

They live in the same hut that Nandkishore built, still bearing signs of the flood almost 10 months old. Her three brothers have been adopted by families in the village.

‘‘Only when Ragini’s father died did the Aurai block office sanction 15 kg of wheat,’’ says Srivastava.

On paper though, officials have taken care to record regular dispatch of relief material.

Aurai block development officer Amit Kumar, who blames the village mukhia for not lifting relief foodgrains, agrees that ‘‘this might have caused some hardship.’’

When The Indian Express reached Aurai, it, coincidentally, walked into a flood review meeting for the monsoons this year. Chaired by the Muzaffarpur District Magistrate S K Mishra at the Aurai BDO, the meeting was soon reduced to a grievance redressal session.

Angry villagers complained how flood relief last year had been totally inadequate. In fact, almost all of 26 panchayats lodged their protest.

The villagers gheraoed the office for hours, not ready to leave till the last complaint had been heard by the DM.

When this reporter checked with the DM, Mishra admitted that many of the complaints were genuine.

He said that nine teams had spread out in the block to look into the complaints.

Relief operations in Hayaghat block in Darbhanga—if it can be called that—is another classic example of what happened in Bihar last year.

Official documents show that 21 truckloads of relief material reached Hayaghat for distribution. But on the ground, it was a different story.

The trucks did reach Hayaghat but the relief was cornered by local leaders who claimed it had not been sent by the government but had been donated by private parties in Patna.

Mukhia Suryabali Jha said had it been government relief, the monitoring cell for relief distribution would have been entrusted the job.

But the Hayaghat monitoring cell, of which he was a member, never got to distribute the supplies.