Rivers in North India are flowing in full spate inundating low-lying areas across cities including Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Gorakhpur right up to Patna and Baruch in Madhya Pradesh. Forty districts in the country have been inundated as are thousands of villages. Manoj Misra of the “Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan” points out: “Low-lying regions across many cities have been inundated with entire embankments being washed away largely because people have been allowed to construct houses in the flood plains of the rivers.” “The foolhardiness of allowing illegal construction saw the public suffer in Moradabad and Ambala in 2010 and now it is the turn of a spate of cities in UP to suffer the same fate,” said Mr Misra. Using a rather dramatic turn of phrase, Mr Misra added: “Rivers are reclaiming their land. This is why historically, the flood plain has always been treated as inviolate.” Water expert Prof. Vikram Soni believes this unprecedented flooding has been caused primarily because of the early onset of the monsoon and because of the large scale deforestation of the Terai. “There is a huge amount of siltation taking place in all our rivers. During the winter months, the water levels of our rivers has become so low that people are walking across from one bank to another,” he said. “That is unheard of because the Ganga’s original depth was over 20 metres while during peak flood it would rise by at least another four metres. If the river is flowing with huge velocity, it will succeed in removing the silt. But if the flow of the river is weak then the state governments will have to take recourse to dredging.... My problem is that if they can’t dredge the water drains in Delhi, then how can will they dredge our rivers of their excess silt ” asked Mr Soni. The ministry of environment has been claiming that they will come forward with the River Zone Regulation Notificatiion to end illegal construction but this has not yet happened.
