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Flood semantics

Even after 16 deaths across the state till Friday morning, the West Bengal government has drawn a fine distinction between…

Flood semantics

Representational image (Photo: Facebook)

Even after 16 deaths across the state till Friday morning, the West Bengal government has drawn a fine distinction between what it calls a “flood-like” situation and floods per se.

The short point must be that the murderous floods lend no scope for semantic quibbling. The distinction means little or nothing to the dispossessed in South Bengal, indeed a vast swathe of districts that have been virtually cut off from the rest of the state.

The recurrent dispute with the DVC over the inevitable discharge of water during the monsoon places both the government and the public undertaking in a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t situation. It would be less than fair to blame the Jharkhand government for the discharge from Maithon and Panchet dams in Dhanbad, bordering Bengal.

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Fundamentally, this is a technological issue with riverine implications. If water is not released, the possibility of a dam burst is dangerously real, and the consequence is much too frightful to imagine. Considering the enormity of the seasonal crisis that both states have to countenance, Mamata Banerjee’s suggestion on “reforming the DVC” does call for reflection.

This would entail an overhaul of the barrages, no easy task. Yet there is no denying that the barrages, old as they are, have neither been cleaned nor dredged regularly. Nor for that matter have the rivers, most particularly the Ganga. This has resulted in the accumulation of sediment; cleaner barrages could well have stored an additional two lakh cusecs of water.

The DVC’s discharge this year is said to be the highest since 2009. Yet the easy option is not to close these structures across the river, as Bihar’s Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, had once suggested in the context of Farakka. The state and DVC must negotiate, without engaging in ill-informed charges and counter-charges.

As the situation in West Bengal deteriorates, an estimated 15 lakh people have been affected throughout the state, with all the blocks inundated in Bankura and Nadia and reports of deaths pouring in from Hooghly, West Burdwan, Purulia, Nadia, Murshidabad, and West Midnapore. It is presumptuous for the administration to suggest that if the “rains stop within two days, we don’t expect any massive damage”. Quite simply, there is no such forecast from the meteorological office.

Which makes it direly imperative for the administration, both at Nabanna and in the districts, to gear up in the tasks of relief, rescue, reconstruction, and rehabilitation… not to forget the need for medical care, decrepit as it is in rural Bengal even in normal circumstances.

With floods in South Bengal and a sensitive part of North Bengal on the boil, the state showcases a distressing study in contrasts, a forbidding challenge for the administration. It is the response that could make all the difference.

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