Floods: Time for a rethink
Lakhinath Chintae is a prosperous farmer in Kamalbari in Assam's Majuli district. But he and his family face a bleak future. The more than 20 hectares (ha) they own have been washed by the recent floods in the state. Elsewhere in Bordolani block in Dhemaji district, Bejia Das has far serious problems. He had borrowed money from a moneylender for his son's education and had promised to pay back with the earnings from this season's harvest, but the floods have put paid to his hopes. "The floods have been unprecedented this year, even by the standards of wet Assam,' Chintae says.
Nearly 400,000 ha of cropped land has been lost, though the monetary loss has not yet been calculated. In Dhemaji district, the Brahmaputra river has deposited sand in over 7,000 ha of agricultural land. The Jia-dhal and Gai nadi, flashy rivers arising from the Arunachal hills, have deposited sand over another 5,000 ha rendering the area completely unproductive.But the state agricultural department does not believe that there is a severe crisis at hand. "The loss of agricultural land isn't much. We have till August-end to mend matters,' Arshad Hussain, agriculture information officer at the department, said. Hussain, however, says that, there will be some loss in production due to the setback in plantation time.
Standard reaction
The state government opened more than 3,500 temporary shelters, besides lodging flood-hit people in schools and office buildings and providing essential food items such as rice, dal and salt to the affected. Baby food and medicines were also distributed. 669 relief camps were opened in the state where 1,46,621 people were provided relief.
The arrangements are rather typical of the state reaction in other flood-hit states. In Bihar, for example, food packets were air dropped in Darbhanga, Madhubani, East Champaran, Samastipur, Begusarai, Bhagalpur and Khagaria districts