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As night descends upon the vast expanse of floodwaters stretching across the Ganga diara (riverine tract), Harinder Rai, from his hut, calls out loudly to his neighbours Baby Devi and Dukhni Devi, who reside in another hut, about 100 meters away. They talk to each other in high-pitched voice to reassure themselves that they are not alone.
"The nights pass in conversation; at least that way, I don't feel scared after dark," says 35-year-old Baby Devi, sitting on a chowki (wooden cot) inside her hut, which is open from two sides.
Fresh hoof prints still mark the damp floor inside her home, bearing witness that floodwaters had entered her home. Estimating the water level, she says,
"The water rose to a depth of about eight fingers' breadth inside the house. We placed a tin sheet over the chowki, spread wet mud on it, set up an earthen stove on top, and cooked our meals there for two days."
But, as living conditions became increasingly difficult, Baby Devi's husband, Kunal Rai, managed to transport their four children and seven heads of cattle by boat to a highway located about 12 km away in Patna. Baby Devi, however, did not go with them. "There is fodder and some grain stored in the house. If I were to leave, someone might steal them,” she explains.
Her home is in Manas village, about 12 kilometers away from Patna. The area has been inundated by floodwaters from Ganga since 29 August.
A Fortress of Floodwaters
To reach Baby Devi’s home, one has to travel for nearly an hour by boat. Throughout the trip, an expanse of muddy water was all one could see in every direction. When The Quint visited, it found that most trees were submerged up to 80 percent of their height, and only the thatched roofs of huts were visible on the liquid horizon.
Concrete two-story buildings were one-third underwater. Occasionally, people could be seen in homes situated on slightly higher ground. In some places, people were moving about for essential works using makeshift boats made by joining plastic containers together.
Baby Devi does not own any farmland; her household runs on the income of selling milk from her cattle. Additionally, her husband works as a daily wage labourer. She says she can’t sleep at night due to the fear of snakes or other creatures climbing onto her bed.
"Whenever there is a ripple in the water, I use a torch to check if a snake or some other animal is approaching. Snakes have entered the house two or three times. I had to throw them back into the water using a stick."Baby Devi
Harinder Rai’s three-room hut looks like an isolated tiny island. He stands outside his hut, facing a vast expanse of water. Three heads of cattle are tethered to the small patch of land in front of the hut. He spent two days on the asbestos-sheet roof of his hut. Recalling the flood, he says, "The water started rising on 29 August and kept increasing daily. By the morning of 5 September, the house was flooded with two to three feet of water."
Fearing the flood situation might worsen, he arranged for a private boat to send his three daughters-in-law, sons, wife, and grandchildren to the highway in Patna. There was no space on the boat for the livestock, so the cattle could not be taken along.
“I couldn’t leave the cattle alone at home, so I stayed back,” he told The Quint.
However, as the floodwaters kept rising and entered the house, Harinder climbed onto the roof of the hut. “I stayed there for two days. It was a relief that it didn’t rain; otherwise, I would have faced serious trouble.”
During those two days, he survived on biscuits. He said, “Even the earthen stove was submerged. How could I have cooked?"
14 Districts Flooded Despite Low Monsoon Rain
Bihar typically receives 1,000 to 1,200 millimeters (mm) of rain during monsoons. However, rainfall has been deficient this time. In June, when the monsoon usually arrives in Bihar, only 103.8 mm of rainfall was recorded, 36 percent below normal. Rainfall was 33 percent below average in July and 29 percent below average in August.
Yet, September saw the rains and the water levels rise. By 10 September, the state had received 90 mm of rain which is 20 percent above normal. Nevertheless, looking at the cumulative data from 1 June to 10 September, the total rainfall was 611.5 mm, which is 27 percent below normal.
Despite the deficient rainfall, 14 districts out of 38 districts in the state—including Patna, Bhojpur, Vaishali, Saran, Bhagalpur, Begusarai, and Katihar—are in the grip of floods. It has affected 533 panchayats across these districts, impacting 44 lakhs people.
All these districts are situated along the banks of the Ganges and its tributaries. This implies that the flooding in Bihar is not caused by local rainfall. The current flood situation in the state is driven by rising water levels in half a dozen rivers, including the Ganges, Ghaghara, Gandak, and Kosi. Water levels in several rivers are flowing above the danger mark.
Eight perennial and 600 seasonal rivers flow through Bihar. River Ganga among them travels the longest—about 445 km through the state—and enters West Bengal near Maldah district.
The combined catchment area of these rivers in the state is about 61,537 square km. This makes 73.63 percent of Bihar’s geographical areas vulnerable to floods. Almost every year a part of the state experiences devastating floods, causing huge losses to lakhs of people. Bihar state disaster management department data says that in the last one decade (between 2015 and 2024), floods have impacted more than 67.6 million people.
“In Bihar, floods come due to heavy rainfall in catchment areas and also heavy rainfall in the adjoining states from where rivers downstream to Bihar,” Pradhan Parth Sarthi, professor at the Department of Environment Science at Central University of South Bihar, told The Quint.
"The current flood situation in the state is because there has been good rain in catchment areas of Ganga. Also, Madhya Pradesh has received good rain. And since the Punpun and Son rivers come from Madhya Pradesh, both rivers are bringing huge amounts of water and pouring it to Ganga. Additionally Gandak and Budhi Gandak are bringing water from Nepal, causing floods in the state."Pradhan Parth Sarthi
In current floods, the Disaster Management Department has claimed that a total of 1,046 community kitchens and 15 relief camps are operating in the flood-affected districts, providing accommodation, food, and medicines for about 11,255 flood evacuees.
According to the government's own data, 44 lakh people in Bihar have been affected by the floods so far. However, the fact that accommodation arrangements were made for only 11,255 evacuees, reflects that the government has managed to provide shelter for merely 0.5 percent of the flood victims.
In Patna itself, about three lakh people remain affected due to floods.
Flood SOP Only on Paper
The flood standard operating procedure (SOP) includes provisions for disseminating early flood warnings to the general public, arranging free boat services for flood victims at the government level, and delivering dry rations to those affected. The SOP further stipulates that if the severity of the flood necessitates evacuation, relief teams using boats will transport the population from the affected areas to pre-designated shelters.
However, flood victims claim that no government aid of any kind has reached them. They are receiving neither government-supplied dry rations nor access to government boats, and they are getting no assistance during emergencies.
"We aren't receiving any help from the government," Baby Devi repeats helplessly. Nodding in agreement, Harinder adds, "We weren't even informed that the water level of the Ganges was going to rise."
Seventy-year-old Dukhni Devi sits by the water's edge outside her hut. Whenever she sees passenger boats passing by, she hopes government aid might be arriving, but she is disappointed every time. "We have been stranded in the water for 10 days. No government boat has come to evacuate us, nor are we receiving any dry rations from the government."
In her 70 years, Dukhni Devi has witnessed many floods. In her view, this particular flood is far more severe.“Hum ekhattar ka daahar bhi dekhe hain…E saal usse thoda kam aaya hai lekin 2016 ke daahar se jaada hai (I have seen the floods of 1971 too... The water level this year is slightly lower than that, but higher than the 2016 floods),” she says.
“I have seen so many floods but the government never tells us in advance about them.”Dukhni Devi
Shyambabu Rai, 35, another resident of Manas village, was in Delhi, where he has been selling tea for the past 15 years, when the floodwaters entered his home. His wife, a child, and elderly parents were at the house, unable to move to a safer location.
His father, Lalo Rai, 70, informed him about the flood over the phone. Upon receiving the call, he boarded a train immediately and reached home five days ago. By the time he arrived, the water level had stopped rising, but the area was still surrounded by floodwaters.
"We have six heads of cattle—cows and buffaloes. How could we leave them behind? The boatman charges Rs 1,000 per animal. That would have meant spending Rs 6,000 just for the livestock. I am old. How could I have loaded the animals onto a boat? That is why I remained at home with my family."Lalo Rai
The family said that no matter how dire the emergency, they "receive no help from the government."
Just four days ago, Shyambabu Rai's 10-year-old son suffered from severe stomach pain. However, neither a government boat nor medicines reached him.
"My son remained in that condition for a whole day. The next day, I waded through neck-deep water for 200 meters, took a private boat which was ferrying passengers, to reach Patna, and got the medicine. It took my whole day to return home... If a government boat had been available, we could have fetched the medicine immediately or taken my son to the hospital."Shyambabu Rai
The Bihar government has set up a relief camp for flood-affected families beside a highway near Digha ghat. Those who managed to reach safer locations had to arrange for private boats, spending thousands of rupees.
Flood Economics and Stories of Loss
Rajpati Devi, a resident of Nakta diara, adjacent to Manas village, is staying at the relief camp with her grandchildren and daughters-in-law. When floodwaters began filling her home, she stacked one wooden cot atop of another and spent the night there with her two daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren, and husband, Sudesh Rai. Although she tried hard to find a private boat as the water rose, she failed.
“No one was ready to take us. We spent the entire day and night at home. The next morning at 10 am, we got a private boat for Rs 3,000 to transport all the family members and two buffaloes to Digha ghat.”Rajpati Devi
Rajpati Devi lost her two quintals of wheat and maize to floods. “Should we have stayed at the chowki ourselves or saved the grain? So, we left the grain behind. "Ka jaane, anaaj sad gaya ki janwar kha gaya (I don’t know if it rotted or was eaten by animals),” she said.
Krish Kumar, Rajpati Devi's 10-year-old grandson sitting in her lap, is sad because his books and copies were destroyed in the floods. He studies in Class 5 in a government school.
He says, “My bag full of books was washed away in the water.” He spent the entire day living in fear. “Pani mein saanp ghoomta rahta tha… bahut dar lagta tha pani dekhkar (Snakes kept moving about in the water... I was terrified just looking at the water).”
When four feet of water entered ’s home, 70-year-old Siparsan Rai rented three boats on 4 September after his house was submerged 4-feet-deep in water, and reached Digha Ghat with 30 family members and nine head of cattle. He spent Rs 5,000 on the boats. But upon reaching the destination, they found there was no camp for the flood victims.
"More than a hundred flood victims had gathered here, but there was no camp. Only a single sheet of polythene was strung up. We and the cattle spent the entire day out in the sun. A camp was set up and a community kitchen started only a day later."Siparsan Rai
Siparsan does not own any farmland. He supports his household by cultivating five bighas of land—for which he pays an annual lease of Rs 30,000—and selling milk from his cattle. The floods completely destroyed his crops. "I had spent Rs 40,000 cultivating okra, sponge gourd, and red lentils; the floods wiped it all out. Now, I will have to take out a loan just to pay the lease," he said.
The Bihar government provides Rs 7,000 per family as flood relief, but Siparsan Rai says this is inadequate. But Siparsan pointed out that their losses were "six to seven times greater than the aid amount provided by the government".
"What can we possibly do with such a small sum?" he asks.
At one end of the relief camp, the government has set up a temporary shelter for cattle, housing between 300 and 400 animals. The government is also arranging fodder for them. However, livestock owners say the supply is insufficient.
"A single animal consumes 4 to 5 kilograms of fodder daily, but the government is providing only 2 to 2.5 kilograms. This leaves the cattle hungry, causing them to yield only half their usual amount of milk," said Siparsan, sitting on a cot near his cattle. “This is impacting our income.”
Two meals a day at the relief camp is a sigh of relief for the flood victims. However, they remain somewhat disheartened regarding the food itself.
As evening falls and this reporter is just about to leave the relief camp after speaking with the flood victims, a young man comes and sits beside me. He says, in an angsty voice, he complains: “For so long, we have been served only rice and vegetables at the camp. We should at least get puri (deep-fried flatbread) for one meal.”
(Umesh K Ray is an independent jouranlist reporting on news and politics from Patna, Bihar).