At a time when the Kosi flood fury has just abated among the displaced people returning to their villages in districts of north Bihar, the spectre of drought in most of the south and central Bihar districts now has started haunting the State. As many as 28 out of total 38 districts are facing drought like situation as a result of scanty rainfall.
Former Bihar Chief Minister and senior JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar too, on Wednesday, said that now the time has come to declare Bihar as a drought-hit State.
“With such scanty rainfall, there is no other alternative but to declare the whole State drought-hit,” said Nitish Kumar at a programme in Patna. He added that during his regime, he had faced two years of flood and two years of drought and “now drought has hit the State once again”.
Officials said that the Government is likely to declare 28 districts drought-hit either at the end of this week or early next week. Similarly, last year, the Government had declared 33 of the 38 districts drought-hit due to 25 per cent rainfall shortage.“This year deficit rainfall is of 28 per cent which has affected paddy sowing and plantation triggering another drought,” said a Government official.
Meanwhile, a State meteorological department official, AK Sen, said that now there was very little hope of good rainfall in the State for the next two weeks. “In the past 10 days scanty rainfall has affected agriculture and the situation is likely to worsen in the coming days. Drought is now a harsh reality in Bihar,” he said.According to a rough estimate, nearly two-third of Bihar’s population earns their livelihood from agriculture and irrigation will only yield results if there is sufficient rainfall.
“There is no water in canals for irrigation and a large part of south and central Bihar is irrigated by the Sone River water”, said a farmer, Rajendra Sharma of Arwal district.“Now we’re dependent on the mercy of the rain god. Paddy plantations now have started dying due to lack of water”, said another farmer of Bihta. The farmers also said that the State Government must take some urgent steps to help them or they will starve to death.
“Sarkar ko jald se jald kuch karna chaiye hamari madad ke liye nahi to bhukmari ke shikar ho jayenge hum sab log”, said Mahendra Yadav of Aurangabad district.Meanwhile, reports said now that the flood scare has abated along the Kosi region of north Bihar, over 70,000 people, who were earlier evacuated from their likely-to-be-affected villages, now have started returning from the relief camps.
Both the Central and State Governments have now declared that there is no further flood scare as water-level has gone down and Nepal too has decided not to trigger anymore blasts to remove mudslide dump.
Both the Central and the State Government had sounded high alert following the massive landslide in Nepal which had blocked the course of the Bhote Kosi. Earlier in 2008, hundreds of people had died and lakhs were displaced when flood had hit the Kosi.