Dear Dinesh:
This is quite a revelation.
Thanks for sharing and educating us.
Chandan.
At 4:09 AM +0000 5/2/05, Dinesh Kumar Mishra wrote:
2nd May 2005
Flood Dispatch-4
I have not seen the Task Force Report on Floods that must have been submitted to the Government , probably , last year. There was an article in a Hindi Paper �Dainik Hindustan� dated 22nd March 2005 by Chaturanan Mishra, former minister of agriculture at the Centre talking about this report. I tried to tap all my contacts for this report without any success. This, despite, right to information act promulgation. One has to have the status of Chaturanan Mishra, at least, to get access to such reports. People like us may also get a chance to see the report but only after it attains a historical status.
To say that it advocates or promotes embankments, what else should have been the terms of reference of the Task Force? The country has about 16,000 kilometers length of this dead elephant. It must be raised and strengthened by the irrigation bureaucracy, which is equally committed to plug all the breaches whether the flood victims like it or not.
Here is an interesting story raising and strengthening of the embankments. The Annual Report of Bihar Irrigation Dept (Water Resource Department) 1987-88 reads something like this, �The Kosi embankments were designed for a flood cycle of 25 years and this year�s flood was that of 100 years. It is decided therefore to raise the embankments of the river so that the discharge of 100 years flood may be accommodated within the embankments. I was talking to the Superintending Engineer (Flood Control) � Bihar, sometimes in 1988. I asked him that there is an average deposition of sediment to the tune of 12.03 centimetres per year within the Kosi embankments in the lower reaches of the Kosi, between Mahishi to Koparia, where the Government had proposed raising of the embankments by 2 metres to accommodate the 100 years flood. These embankments were completed in 1960 and were 28 years old in 1988. And if the annual rise of the bed of the river is multiplied by 12.03 centimetres; the bed of the river was already risen by 3.37 metres, on an average. How on earth, the raising of embankments by two metres only would accommodate 100 years floods? Unless raised by 3.37 metres, the embankments the embankments may not be able to accommodate even the 25 years floods. How then will they accommodate 100 years floods?
He asked me how did I get to know this figure that the average bed rise of the Kosi was 12.03 centimetres? He told me that it was a top secret (This was the Delhi IIT Report that is referred to and is indeed a top secret report). I told him that this information was leaked in a paper presented by the Engineer-in Chief of Bihar in a seminar in the Patna Engineering College a couple of years ago and that is how I know it. He was shocked that such an important information was leaked by none other than the Engineer-in-Chief of the State but had no answer to my question. Then he called his secretary or the technical advisor who appeared to be an engineer. The Superintending Engineer asked him who wrote this portion of the report that by raising the embankments by 2 metres, the 100 year�s flood would be accommodated within the embankments? The secretary had no answer.
The Superintending Engineer cautioned him to ensure that such things should not go in the annual report. �The people have started reading our reports..� he said. The Kosi Embankments were raised, however, by 2 metres in the same year but the sermon was withdrawn from the subsequent reports. That is how the irrigation bureaucracy works. It does not know what it is doing and why? Every official says that he has instructions from above and cannot do anything at the local level. What is it that they get salaries for? Is it not the parking fee for their brains elsewhere?
Dinesh Kumar Mishra
Convenor-Barh Mukti Abhiyan
C-7 Vatika Green City
PO MGMC Dimna Road
Jamshedpur 831018
Ph: 0657-2650844
Mob: 91-9431303360
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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