More than 21 million people and over 394 square miles have been affected by the flooding, according to the government.
NEW DELHI — Millions of farmers and their families may be displaced for months after severe floods in northern India wiped out crops and homes, leaving hundreds of villages under several feet of water.
The Kosi River in Bihar, one of India’s poorest and most populous states, jumped its banks this week after a dam burst in bordering Nepal, causing the worst floods in the area in 50 years.
Rescue efforts continued on Friday, and boats were dispatched and trains mobilized to find and move millions who have been left stranded by the rising waters. More than 21 million people and over 394 square miles have been affected by the flooding, the Bihar government said on Friday. About a quarter of a million people have been evacuated.
Evacuees may not be able to return to their homes, if those homes still exist, until fall, state government officials said. “This water will remain for some time,” said Devi Rajak, the chief engineer for Bihar’s water resource department. “It may start decreasing in September depending upon upstream discharge.”
The breach in the dam that caused the flooding is eight miles inside Nepal, he said, and therefore difficult to gain access to and fix. “We are facing labor problems, law and order problems, and logistics problems,” he said.
The Nepalese government said that work to fix the break was under way, and that its officials were cooperating with the Indian government. The river has flooded its banks in Nepal as well, displacing tens of thousands of people.
About a quarter of a million homes in India have already been destroyed by the floods, Indian officials say.
The official death toll from the flooding was set at 12 by the Bihar government, but aid workers and people in the area said that number was low, in part because access to the area to assess the damage and recover bodies is limited. ActionAid, an anti-poverty agency based in South Africa, estimates that 2,000 people have died and that thousands more are missing.
“We are helpless,” Rajiv Kumar Singh, 36, said in a telephone interview from Singheshwar, a village in the flooded Madhepura district of Bihar. Some people have been washed away as their families watched, he said, and survivors have been living for days on the roadside, in government offices or in schools. “This whole area is under three or four feet of water,” he said, adding that fevers and diarrhea were spreading. “There is only one doctor here, and he cannot cater to all the people,” he said.
Kamlesh Prasad Singh, 50, a farmer from the village of Patori in the Madhepura district, said in a telephone interview that his village was full of water four or five feet deep. “I left my home, my five cattle and my six acres of rice fields behind,” he said. “I am completely ruined.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the situation a “national calamity” on Thursday and said the government had earmarked about $230 million in aid for the region.
Water continued to flow into new areas on Friday, and helicopters, hundreds of military boats and thousands of enlisted personnel were picking up stranded people.
Trains full of supplies were being sent from New Delhi to assist and transport evacuees. The situation is expected to worsen over the weekend, with meteorologists predicting heavy rain in the region.