In an idyllic three-storey house, nestled amongst a rich garden of all kinds of flowers and fruit trees, playing host to most of the birds, insects and even monkeys, Samarpita, staying alone in her ancestral house, was going about her usual morning chores on Wednesday morning when water began to flow in and flood her garden, and the ground floor. Her house, is near the train station in Panskura, East Midnapur district of West Bengal, one of the ten districts that were completely inundated in the recent floods of West Bengal.
Samarpita, in her early forties, had never seen a flood before. She had heard her parents speak of a great flood in 1978 when their house too was inundated, but in her memory, she had seen some villages nearby get flooded sometimes, but never had water reached their house, which was very near the train station, and which never got inundated.
Unlike River Ganga, the Damodar is primarily a rain fed river, mainly depending on water sources from its origin in upper catchment area and tributaries. Rainfall caused by a low-pressure system in the Bay of Bengal last week led to an increase in water levels at the Maithon and Panchet reservoirs. After DVC released water from these reservoirs, vast areas in West Midnapore, Hooghly, Howrah, Bankura, East Midnapore, East Burdwan, and West Burdwan were flooded.
According to a report, Panskura railway station and its adjoining bus stand in East Midnapore district are not only connectors between East and West Midnapore but also serve as gateways to other districts of the state. The nearly 10 sq. km area surrounding Panskura railway station, which connects NH6 and the Ghatal state highway on the western side and road links to Tamluk, Contai, and Haldia on the eastern side, has been submerged under seven feet of water – for the first time since the 1978 flood.
“In 1978, there was water on the eastern side but the western side was dry. So people could enter the station through the other side of the platform but this time the entire area is inundated making the station completely inaccessible. Swimming through the strong current is the only option left,” a resident who had also seen the 1978-flood said.
People, who absolutely had no other option of reaching the station, had to wade through neck-deep water to reach the station, change their clothes and then board the trains.
Not only was the train station cut-off, but also bus services were severely affected. The Panskura bus stand, one of the district’s major bus terminals and a key road link to most districts in south Bengal, was completely submerged under nearly seven feet of water.
At the time of writing this article, the water-level is receding, but Samarpita says that all the shops near the station are still closed, bringing the local commercial economy to a standstill. The one-kilometre-long Panskura station market, a major trade hub in the district that supplies various commodities to places within and outside Bengal are still shut undoubtedly causing significant losses for traders.
Usually, due to heavy rains, when such floods are likely to occur, the administration would announce and issue warnings, but somehow this time they didn’t. So Wednesday morning when water just started pouring in in her house, it was very sudden and shocking. And almost at the same time, to avert greater calamity, since most of the electric transformers lay on the ground floors of the houses, the electricity got switched off by the electricity office.
Samarpita says that the flooding of Kangsabati is an annual phenomenon and the BDO in previous years was an efficient person and used to repair the dams timely, but ever since he got transferred, the new BDO has been “building buildings” with government funds and haven’t looked at the irrigation department’s functioning at all, bringing about such devastation in the region.
As expected, the West Bengal Chief Minister promptly blamed the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) for releasing of water and calling the floods man-made. (The Jawaharlal Nehru government has set up the Damodar Valley Corporation under a Special Act of Parliament, the DVC Act 1948.) She has threatened to ‘severe all ties’ with DVC, and since then, the State’s representatives in DVC has resigned. She also wrote accusatory letters to the central government, which of course, the central government denied.
Like so many other discourses, the people stranded in the floods hardly paid any attention to any of it. There were people crying to see their two-storey houses that they built spending their last saved rupee, being swept away by the floods, there were people carrying utensils and buckets wading through neck-high water to find some drinking water, there were people pouncing on the meagre relief that’s being occasionally distributed. Will somebody’s resignation somewhere help these people get some drinking water?
Samarpita said that the boats sometimes brought dry muri and biscuits but she didn’t get any. Samarpita’s elder sister who stayed at some distance sent her son with drinking water to her – he would walk through chest-deep water and give her few bottles of drinking water. She used the little stored water that she had from the previous day to wash and keep herself clean.
The Damodar Valley Reservoir Regulatory Committee (DVRRC) (that included members from Jharkhand and West Bengal state governments, besides the DVC, and having representation of member secretary of the Central Water Commission (CWC)) is the only authorised body that can decide on the discharge of water from the dams of Damodar Valley Corporation. So what exactly does “severing ties” with a central public sector power behemoth mean? Resignation of a few individuals representing the state?
DVC is the only central power producer having its headquarters in West Bengal. The DVC has also undertaken several expansion projects of its thermal power plants in Durgapur of West Burdwan and Raghunathpur of Purulia district. (The DVC plans to set up a 800 MW thermal power plant in Durgapur with an investment of Rs 8,000 crores. Recently, the Union Cabinet headed by PM Narendra Modi has also approved the Rs 2170 crores third line expansion of Jamshedpur-Purulia-Asansol rail link, eyeing the huge upcoming central investment projects in Raghunathpur, Burnpur and Durgapur. In Raghunathpur of Purulia district, DVC will be investing another Rs, 12,000 crores to set up 1320 MW coal fired thermal power units. The DVC generates 1200 MW of power from Raghunathpur and after completion of the project will generate a total 2520 MW of power.) So what is the implication of “severing ties” for these projects that are on-the-anvil?
The DVC, on the other hand, has blamed the Jharkhand government for its release of 85,000 cusecs of water from Tenughat Dam without informing the power manufacturer. The DVC has kept urging the Jharkhand government to hand over the operations of Tenughat dam (which was constructed in 1974) to it, but to no avail.
To most of us in the comforts of our homes in the city, the flood seems like a distant reality, to be lamented when seen on TV at best, or just appears to be too bland a news, at worst. To most of us who are used to twenty-four hours of uninterrupted power supply throughout the year, who are clueless what to do without internet for two minutes, without being able to use the microwave for a few hours, it’s hard to imagine for example, to be without electricity and water for three days.
When Samarpita called up the BDO and started complaining, “Please be more alert… it is because of your inefficiency that the inhabitants of Panskura are in such a state…”, the phone was promptly disconnected. The previous year when Samarpita had gone to complain about another problem to the police station, she was told by an officer on duty something like, “apnar haate kagoj kalam aachhe bolei ki apni shotti kotha likhben… eka thaken, apnar saathe ja kichhu ghot-te paare (just because you have pen and paper, does it mean you can write the truth always… you stay alone, anything can happen anytime…)”.
Samarpita was smart enough to understand what he hinted when he said those words – the implicit threat, the lurking sneer of harmful intentions. She had gone back without formally complaining anything. But who can guarantee that there wouldn’t be more R G Kars (R G Kar referring to the gruesome incident where a young trainee doctor was brutally raped and murdered) if she had insisted on lodging her complaint?
In a country where corruption is so enmeshed in our bureaucratic and administrative matrix, patriarchal psychology is so overwhelmingly predominant in all strata of society, and misogynistic mentality is all-pervading in every walk of life, it’s in fact strange that ‘R G Kars’ aren’t more rampant. It would probably be more of an exception to be alive, especially for protesting, complaining women. It’s really a ‘net of death in which by chance we live’ (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri).
On Friday night, after almost three days of such unimaginable circumstances, electricity came back. But the pump that pump up water still had muddy unclean water, but she was still able to have a shower on Saturday. In the meantime, the stench of stagnant water all around made her feel nauseous and sick. Water had begun to recede but she saw dead fishes, snakes and frogs all around and she was thinking of hiring someone to clean everything.
Sometimes even the most obvious things in life – just living in a clean hygienic house, being able to properly have food and water, being able to properly clean oneself, being able to pursue one’s work and hobbies – seem such a Herculean feat. Especially living in a quagmire of corruption where honest intentions easily lose their way in a sea of “eka thaken, apnar saathe ja kichhu ghot-te paare (you stay alone, anything can happen anytime)”, where government services get buried under political slugfest, it’s really hard to keep one’s spirits up, to feel positive about life and society.
As I am writing this piece, there’s news of a possible upcoming depression in the Bay of Bengal again, that might cause heavy rains in some districts again. One wonders what exactly is man-made and what is not – isn’t global warming that causes such devastating changes in weather and climactic conditions man-made? Isn’t corruption of officials that gobble funds meant to be spent on repairing dams, man-made? Isn’t suppressing the voice of dissent and the cry of truth with the sinewy machinery of the state that creates fear in the hearts of people, man-made?
And as Samarpita keeps her fingers crossed about what’s going to happen this time, she trusts even more in an all-powerful god, and prays.
Soumyanetra Munshi, Associate Professor, Economic Research Unit (ERU), Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Kolkata
