Is election patchwork enough to fix the ‘sorrow’ of Bihar?
Villagers in Kundah face land loss to the Kosi river's shifting course, blaming government inaction as they prepare for upcoming elections.
One evening late last week, there was disquiet at Kundah village on the Kosi river’s eastern bank. Ram Jatan Sada, was busy loading his household’s belongings into a tractor trolley parked a few metres away.
An angry Kosi had taken a huge chunk of land a few feet away from his hut next to a government run primary school, where he has lived with his wife and three children for almost two decades.
Other villagers were helping Sada, even as some were cursing the government for not doing anything to prevent avulsion (river changing its course) due to heavy siltation.
As the monsoon rain ended and the water level in the river went down in the first week of October, villagers say, the Kosi, laden with silt and debris, slowly started moving left, washing land and taking away 14 hutments.
“I never thought that Kosi Maiya (mother) would take my house again,” Sada rues, as his wife loads a caron with steel plates and spoons.
Like close to a million people living on the banks of river Kosi between the two 126 kilometre-long embankments built by the Centre with the help of Russian engineers in 1963, Sada was first displaced about two decades ago.
“I built my hut here thinking it would be safe when we lost our earlier home to the river,” says the daily wage labourer, whose two sons returned to Delhi earlier in the week after celebrating Chhath Puja with the family.
Still, curses apart, villagers admit that there has been a quicker response this time from the Water Resources Department (WRD) to the avulsion. They say the reason is apparent—the forthcoming Bihar assembly elections taking place on November 6 and 11 with the votes to be counted on November 14.
“Chunau ka samah hai (it is election time),” says Mohammed Islam, another villager, looking at WRD’s sub-divisional officer (SDO) from Maisi block, who is supervising about 20 labourers placing sandbags to prevent the village’s only school from collapsing.
The SDO says, on the condition of anonymity, that they have been working there for the last 10 days.
Friday was the last day they could do so, he explains. “Till October 31 we could prevent erosion under flood management (rules). After that, we have to submit a separate plan for approval under the anti-erosion scheme.”
River management
Like several rivers originating in the Himalayas, Kosi has a history of changing its course in both directions, east and west, and has caused massive flooding in Nepal and plains of northern Bihar in its long history.
Between 1736 and 1949,it shifted about 249.5 kms west, earning the tagline “Sorrow of Bihar” for causing frequent devastating floods which impacted settlements, agriculture and infrastructure.
“To check repeated flooding and to tame the river, former Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru decided to build two embankments starting from Nepal to Kaparia. A memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Nepal government and mud embankments were built with the help of Russian engineers,” says Dinesh Mishra, an Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur professor, who has studied the Kosi river basin.
According to official records, in 1955 the Bihar legislative assembly approved a rehabilitation policy for 1.92 lakh people trapped in the 1.2 lakh hectare embankments zone in Sapaul, Saharsa, Madhepura and Araria districts, providing them with free land and money for construction of homes.
However, no land for agriculture land was provided as there was no government land available outside the embankments; many of them, like Sada, returned to live inside the embankments building huts. As one drives towards Kundah, hundreds of huts and some concrete homes can be seen between the two embankments.
As per the 2011 census, 9.8 lakh people in 380 villages were living inside the Bihar side of embankments.
As a huge population continued to live inside the embankments, political pressure grew on the successive governments to provide basic health, education and road facilities. Rajendra Jha, who runs Kosi Sadakat Ashram, a social organisation working on water management in the area, says the government simply forgot about its plan to relocate everyone and provided the facilities demanded.
He adds even though the embankments tamed the river and reduced flooding to some extent, they destroyed local agriculture by causing water logging between the two embankments and outside.
“I was born here in 1952 and there was no water logging then. It started after 1963 when the embankments were built,” Jha says, a view endorsed by Mishra, who has published studies on impact of embankments on local population and hydrology. As the agriculture production in Kosi region went down, it caused migration even though the government is trying to revive local income through alternatives such as makana and fish production, Jha adds.
In August 2008, Kosi shifted east, breaching the embankment about 13 kms upstream of the Kosi barrage in Nepal that is managed by the Bihar government, causing massive flooding and leading to the death of nearly 500 people in north Bihar and affecting 3.3 million people living in 3,700 square km area in the state, as per the official records.
After the floods, the Bihar government, with the assistance of the World Bank, started strengthening the embankments building spurs to prevent breaches. However, not much de-siltation of the river took place. “It is very difficult to desilt Kosi because of heavy sediment flow every year and the river frequently changes its course,” says a former director of Bihar water resources department requesting anonymity.
In the 2024 Union budget, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a ₹8,000 crore project to strengthen the western embankment. “We have been demanding that the eastern embankment also needs strengthening as in 2008 Kosi moved eastwards,” says Amit Anand, a Saharsa based social activist.
In 2025, the union cabinet approved the ₹6,282 crore Kosi Mechi intra-state river linking project for taking excess water from Kosi river in monsoon months to Mahananda river basin through Mechi river through remodelling and improvement of two existing canals.
The project, on which the work is going on for the past 10 years, is to be completed by 2029. The Link Project is estimated to provide 210,516 hectares additional annual irrigation in kharif season in Araria, Purnea, Kishanganj and Katihar districts of Bihar, as per a statement from the Press Information Bureau.
The Environment Impact Assessment for Kosi-Mechi, however, admitted inability of the project to address siltation or catchment issues due to funding limits, raising sustainability doubts. In 2024, people affected by the Kosi flood protested against the project, demanding priority for flood relief over the new linking. In January 2025, the Patna high court reviewed progress of Kosi water management plans, including Kosi-Mechi interlinking and flood victim rehabilitation, and urged faster implementation of the de-siltation schemes in north Bihar.
Politics
The Kosi region has 13 assembly seats spread across four districts that have been a hotbed of socialist movement and do not show the communist influence seen in southern and eastern Bihar, according to Madhepura based political activist Pranav Prakash. “It is from this region that one socialist icon, Sharad Yadav defeated another one, Lalu Prasad, in 1989,” he says.
In 2020, the National Democratic Alliance won 10 seats in the belt, with eight going to Janata Dal (United) and two to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) won the remaining three seats. It was believed that RJD’s poor performance in Kosi and neighbouring Seemanchal regions was a reason for the Grand Alliance’s defeat in the 2020 assembly elections.
“The performance was not as per our expectations,” admits Ajay Kumar Singh, RJD member of legislative council (MLC) from Kosi region. “We will do much better this time,” he asserts. Ratnesh Sada, Bihar excise minister and JD(U) leader claims that the NDA will sweep the region, doing better than in 2020. “The work done in the region from Kosi river management to infrastructure development by Nitish Kumar government has changed the region. We will win all seats here.”
At Kundah village, there is a mixed reaction.
Kaleshwar Rai, 72, says that no chief minister has worked like Nitish Kumar. “In 20 years, Nitish Kumar has worked for people. My pension has increased to ₹1,100 from ₹400 and women have got ₹10,000. Roads are in good condition and we don’t face any law and order issues.”
But Madhukant Chaudhary says, “Health and education are in shambles. Even for a minor ailment, we have to visit a hospital either in Saharsa or Patna. School buildings are in bad shape.”
Mohammed Badru says that the village’s only school has lost its playground and part of its building to avulsion. “Children have to now study in the open. We pooled money to build a tin shed over an open classroom after Kosi submerged part of the school building four years ago.”
Sada, who is listening to the conversation, is only worried about his home. The government could have saved it, he tells everyone, adding quickly, that he bears no “ill-will” towards Nitish Kumar. “If they had started anti-erosion work earlier, my hut could have been saved. I have to look for a new place now.”
