Taming the Kosi river

  • 01/09/2008

  • Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

Kosi, the river of sorrow of Bihar, is in the news. The news is really bad. As long expected by the professinals, embankment has breached. Fifty thousand persons in Nepal and 2.5 million in Bihar are experiencing the fury of the Kosi flood. Embankments are no solution to the flood problem. It is in their nature to breach river sediments desposit between the embankments, river rises in level, and must breach its earthen banks. But embankments do raise a sense of protection, though false. That is why hundreds of crores have been sanctioned to build more of them.