A Hindu legend has it
that enamoured by her beauty, a demon proposed marriage to Kosi. The
beautiful girl, in the guise of a river, said she would accept his
proposal only if the demon could contain her within the Himalayas
before the break of dawn. The demon worked furiously to stop the Kosi
from flowing. Sensing the demon’s urgency, Kosi sought help from her
father, Lord Shiva. Disguised as a rooster, Shiva crowed just before
dawn, and the demon was fooled into believing that he had failed to
fulfil Kosi’s condition.
The Kosi remained free then and seeks her freedom even today.
Overflowing the barrier built around its course as it descends from the
mountains, the river is responsible for the current floods in 11
districts of north Bihar. So far, more than a million people have
become homeless.
Often disturbed by those who have tried but failed to tame it, the Kosi
is known to send out frequent warnings against human misadventure along
its course.
Trapped between the Devil and Deep Waters, development expert Dinesh
Mishra’s timely, and painstaking account of the Kosi reads like a
biography of the river—with details from scriptures, folklore,
mythology and history—that debunks the myth that this river is the
“sorrow of Bihar”.
Great civilizations grow along river banks, and it is true in the case
of the Kosi. Bihar is the land that gave to the world great saints and
messiahs in Gautam Buddha and Mahavir; the finest knowledge centres at
Nalanda and Vaishali; and nurtured Jayaprakash Narayan’s total
revolution. Unfortunately, such contributions have gone unnoticed in
modern development discourse.
Mishra lashes out at the politician-engineer-contractor nexus—the
hydrocracy of our country—for having manipulated the Kosi’s course in
the past six decades, causing displacement of millions of peasants in
Bihar. Trapped between the Devil and Deep Waters makes for compelling
reading, unveiling the factors that have contributed to the trapping of
more than 10 million people between the jacketed river and the
water-logged area outside it.
Mishra explains why the river has been flowing at a level higher than
its adjoining mainland. Hydraulics formulae don’t seem to work in the
case of the Kosi: The reduced cross-section of the river due to
embankments was expected to facilitate the dredging of its bed.
Instead, the Kosi offloaded silt into the river and raised the level of
its bed. That the Kosi is among one of the highest silt-laden rivers in
the country makes matters worse. Had the river been free to meander, it
would have deposited fertile silt, collected from the slopes of Mount
Everest and Kanchenjunga, across the plains of north Bihar. But that
was not to be, as most of the silt carried over the years lies trapped
between river banks, reducing the stream flow on the one hand and
making the embankments vulnerable to breach on the other.
Mishra also revisits historical records and official documents—the book
is full of official statistics, political statements and voices from
the grassroots, lending credibility to the argument that floods caused
by this river are indeed man-made.
The book also provides a list of possible solutions to the Kosi
juggernaut. But Mishra's message is clear: If things remain the way
they are, the worst lies ahead.
http://www.livemint.com/2008/09/26234611/The-wrath-of-the-Kosi.html
Copyright © 2007 HT Media.
