By Joydeep Gupta, Mubina Akhtar Nearly a thousand people have been killed by floods in Nepal, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam in India, and in Bangladesh. Almost all of southern and interior western India is grappling with water scarcity. With mega-city Chennai being supplied by water trains, one woman in the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh seen killing another at a water queue. Women elsewhere in the state have been blockading a highway because they have not had drinking water for a week.
Tamil Nadu: The first train carrying water from Jolarpet railway station in Vellore district reaches Chennai. The state government had announced to bring in water from Vellore by rail wagons as Chennai is facing water crisis. pic.twitter.com/W1dJTHw1Bo
— ANI (@ANI) July 12, 2019
Meanwhile, the Indian states of Bihar, West Bengal, and the northeastern states, as well as the neighbouring country of Bangladesh, are experiencing massive floods. In Assam, the Brahmaputra has flooded 95 percent of the Kaziranga National Park — home of the one-horned rhino and a World Heritage Site. The road link between north-eastern India and the rest of the country is flooded. All 56 gates of the barrage on the Kosi river at the India-Nepal border have been opened to prevent catastrophe. The result is floods engulfing all of north-eastern Bihar in downstream India. The June-September monsoon that brings 80 percent of the annual rainfall to South Asia is running late and has now stalled. About half of India’s 600 million farmers have not been able to sow their main crop of the year — they do not have irrigation facilities and are dependent on rain. Official figures compiled by the central agriculture ministry show a 33 percent deficit in sowing. Aurangabad in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, western India, is reporting that water reservoirs are 99.7 percent empty. The monsoon is not scheduled to reach Pakistan yet, but with contiguous parts of India — Punjab and Rajasthan — reporting tardy rainfall, alarm bells have started to ring. Authorities in Pakistan are reporting that water reservoirs in southern Punjab and Sindh are almost dry. In Chennai, despite the arrival of two water trains with much fanfare, over 30 percent of the six million residents are seeing water in community taps only once in three days, not to talk of water reaching home. Night-long queues at these taps have become a must. In smaller cities throughout southern, western and central India, municipal water supply has almost collapsed. Eastern India is not facing such a scarcity of water for domestic use, but farmers in semi-arid regions — such as Purulia and Birbhum districts of West Bengal and adjoining areas in Jharkhand — are looking at crop failure as the rainfall remains scanty. Managers at thermal power stations in Jharkhand are contemplating forced closure for a time, since there is almost no water to wash the coal before use. At the same time, relief centres for flood-displaced people are being opened throughout southern Nepal, north-eastern Bihar, the Alipurduar region in West Bengal and all along the Brahmaputra valley in Assam. At last count, over seven million people had been displaced. Not just humans In many ways, Kaziranga National Park shows the plight of both people and animals during the current flood. Hundreds of vehicles are stranded on National Highway 37, which connects north-eastern India to western Assam and the rest of the country. Park rangers are working round the clock to let vehicles alternately drive through a narrow stretch above the floodwaters, and closing the road so that animals can cross to the safety of the Karbi Anglong hills on the south. The Brahmaputra — which flows along the northern end of the forest — crossed the danger mark on 13 July. Elephants, buffaloes, rhinos, deer, wild boar were all seen crossing the highway. Over a dozen hog deer were run down by speeding vehicles, said a ranger, adding that there could be no full count of the animals drowned until the floodwaters receded. In the meanwhile Rohini Ballav Saikia, the Divisional Forest Officer in charge of Kaziranga, today confirmed the recovery of a dead rhino in the Agaratoli Range that took the toll to four rhinos till now. There have been news of elephant calves being washed away and the death of a Royal Bengal tiger and hundreds of hog deer due to drowning.


)

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
