Efficacy of Kosi embankment as a measure of flood control

Abstract

Embankments as a structural measure of flood protection have been playing a crucial role. The debate on embankment or no embankment? is now a twice told tale. The efficacy and utility of embankment as an instrument of flood control has always been taken with a pinch of salt. The Kosi embankment is also not an exception. The Kosi embankment, a component of the Multipurpose Scheme to tame and train the Kosi River, was constructed in 1959. The purpose of this study is to see whether the embankment has withstood the test of time in providing protection from flood and improving the socio-economic condition of the people. Despite embankments, floods remain a regular phenomenon causing colossal loss of life and property. Irony is that with increase in the length of embankments the flood affected area and the flood prone areas have also gone up. This appears antithetical but this is supported by the figures of the departments of the Flood Control and the Disaster management. In course of our field visit I found people completely disillusioned from the embankment. The people within and outside the embankment have their own woes to narrate. The land outside the embanked area though reasonably protected from floods, has lost its productivity and agriculture has ceased to be economically viable. Apart from changing the cropping pattern of the area, the embankment has caused a serious problem of drainage congestion and a large area is almost perennially waterlogged. The revival of the old drainage systems in the area needs to be taken up. The sorrow state of affairs of agriculture in the district and large-scale migration to Punjab and western U.P. leaves no room to believe that the embankments have hardly kept their promises. The solution of the flood problem in Kosi basin lies in distribution of Kosi waters into its several old channels and this is in line of the philosophy of the interlinking of rivers. Reviving the age old tradition of living with the flood with the support of all modern technology will go a long way in easing the problem of the area with minimum interference in the arena of Mother Nature.