[Reader-list] Common Questions Asked about Embankments at the Field Level

[Jeebesh]

Got this mail from the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan <yamunajiye at gmail.com> on  
Kosi embankment. best jeebesh



Common Questions Asked about Embankments at the Field Level


Q1. The flood situation has not improved, even after the construction  
of the embankments, because the spacing between them is too small;  
hence it should, as least, be doubled



Ans (1) The spacing between the embankments is designed keeping in  
view the discharge passing through them. If it is increased, the area  
available for flow within them will increase the water will move with  
a lower velocity and lesser depth. This will mean more time for the  
sediments to deposit in the riverbed. The riverbed will continue to  
rise but it does not mean that by doubling the spacing between the  
embankments; the rise in the bed will reduce to half. But, surely, the  
rise of the riverbed will be less than what it used to be earlier and  
it will take more time to attain the bed levels of today. Increasing  
spacing amounts to postponing the problem.



Ans (2) By increasing the spacing, a larger area will come within the  
embankments and will be subject to annual flooding and erosion. The  
people whose lands and houses will be trapped will oppose the more.  
Such opposition was quite vehement while the Kosi embankments were  
being constructed (1955-60) and the original profile of the proposed  
embankment was changed many times due to the people’s pressure. In  
fact the embankments constructed are only a caricature of the proposed  
profile of the embankments.



Ans (3) Conditions outside the embankments will not change.



Q2. Why not make the embankments, Pucca, of concrete?



Ans (1) Making the embankments pucca will not prevent the river from  
depositing sediments within them. The riverbed will continue to rise.  
The embankments now will not breach but they can surely be overtopped  
during high floods. Water logging conditions outside the embankments  
will not change.



Ans (2) It’s cost will be prohibitive.



Q3 The Americans and the Chinese are managing their embankments so  
well and there are no floods there. Why cannot we do the same here?



Ans(1) This is not true. Both the countries have problems with the  
embankments along their rivers. The Mississippi basin saw one of the  
worst floods in 1993. 34 The Chinese continue to struggle with their  
embankments to date. They have even resorted to selective breaching  
(1998) of the embankments in the countryside to save the thickly  
populated towns from flooding. “…… This past week, hundreds of  
thousands of rural dwellers had to be first evacuated in order that  
the PLA could blow up some river banks. The reason was simple though  
no comfort to those evacuated. The Yangtze had reached such heights  
that it threatened to flood the major industrial city of Wuhan. The  
banks were blown by the explosives in order to spread out the river  
waters, before they inundated Wuhan.’’35



The Chinese are trying to make large dams to control floods, but  
whether that will be effective in controlling floods is debatable.



In order to save Samastripur town in Bihar, local villagers believe,  
the government got the embankment along the Burhi Gandak breached at  
Satmalpur  in 1986. The same thing was said about Jhanjharpur suburb  
in Madhubani, Bihar, for some years. If the embankments along the  
Kamala do not breach south of Jhanjharpur or on the western side of  
the river, Jhanjharpur town will be under greater threat of  
inundation. The local people feel that these breaches are engineered  
by the the Jhanjharpur administration.



Q4. Why not set up some industry that makes use of the sediments  
deposited within the embankments?



Ans. We have noted earlier the quantity of sediments that are  
deposited annually within the embankments. No industry can consume so  
much sedimentary material.



Q5. Will not make tarmac roads on the embankments to allow traffic  
over them? This will ensure their proper maintenance.



Ans. This should be possible but it does not answer any of the  
problems posed by the embankments. It just amounts to improving their  
upkeep. In the context of floods, it will surely improve  
communications for some time.



Q6 Do embankments breach only because the maintenance staff is corrupt  
and there is a shortage of funds to maintain the structures?



Ans. This is not true. Even the best maintained embankments can breach  
if the flow grossly exceeds the designed limits. Besides, the  
embankments are bound to breach because of the limitations of the  
technology. Corruption or the shortages of funds only hasten this  
process but are not the only causes. Vested interests benefiting from  
a breach also play a role. The Kosi breach at Nauhatta, Saharsa (1984)  
and the Dholi breach in Burhi Gandak (1987) are reported to be the  
handiwork of vested interests.



Q7. If embankments are so harmful, why do people allow these  
embankments to be built, in the first place? Why did they not protest  
that the embankment could be built only on their dead bodies?



Ans. It is wrong to say that people did not protest against the  
embankments. When the Kosi embankment was being constructed (1955-60),  
the people, including children and women opposed the construction  
literally by lying over the ground near Agargarha Dhar in Madhubani  
district and near Jamalpur, in Darbhaang district. These protests  
turned violent and many of the contractors engaged in the work, along  
with the workers of the Bharat Savak Samaj engaged in public  
cooperation, were chased away by the people. The field offices of the  
Kosi Project were also set on fire. The government was compelled to  
suspend the work for some time in 1956-57. 36 It was only after the  
general elections of 1957 that enough armed police was available and  
deployed at the construction sites of the embankments. The Kosi  
embankments were thus constructed under the shadow of bayonets. In  
order ot crush the movement, the government pushed the Bharat Sevak  
Samaj to the forefront and gave contracts to those who were most vocal  
and virtually bought off the movement. Besides, hundreds of people,  
including women and children, were put in jails. Court cases were  
filed against some three hundred persons.37 The Bhakua gap in the  
Kamala embankments could not be filled because the local people were  
vehemently opposed to it. This gap is still open. 38



An aggressive marketing of embankments followed the construction of  
the Kosi embankments, which paved the way for jacketing of other rivers.



Q8. If embankments are so bad, why are the people tolerating them now?



Ans. The people who live outside the embankments do not want to be hit  
by surges of water caused by a breach. They suffer them silently  
because the conditions following flood will be even worse for them.  
Those living inside the embankments are the ultimate sufferers and  
hence they never approve of them. During the monsoons, life inside the  
embankments becomes unbearable and people do wish that they were done  
away with. At times they do breach the embankments openly. The six  
breaches in the Bagmati embankment that occurred in the floods of 1993  
are yet to be plugged because of the people’s resistance. 39 The  
western Mahananda embankment was breached by people at three places in  
1996 and the embankment victims have not allowed these gaps to be  
repaired. 40 The Kamala embankments breach and are cut the regular  
intervals in madhubani district. Similar events are repeated at  
Manihari in Katihar almost every year. Public cuts (PC) in the  
embankments of Assam rivers are no secrets. Hence to say that  
embankments are desirable is not true. The people tolerate them merely  
because they do not have choice.



Q9. Should embankments be demolished?



Ans. Rivers will demolish the embankments on their own; the people do  
not have to do it. However, if the people do not want the breaches  
plugged, they should not be plugged. The first choice to decide the  
fate of the embankments should lie with the people closest to the  
river along which these are built and whose flow affects them  
immediately.



Q10. Will plantation over the slopes of embankments help enhance their  
life?



Ans. Probably, yes. But embankments belong to the concerned  
departments and only they can do it. But one should be very cautious  
in choosing the right kind of tree. The Kamala embankments near  
Jhanjharpur in the Madhubani district of Bihar are planted with Acacia  
(Babul), which makes their maintenance very difficult in case of  
emergencies.



Q11. It is said that the life – span of an embankment is 25 years.  
Does it mean that embankments will breach after 25 years of their  
construction?



Ans. Embankments are designed for a certain period of a flood cycle,  
which may be of 25 years. The maximum discharge passing through a  
river at a certain point in a year is recorded, as a routine. If such  
records are available for, say, 100 years, these annual maximum  
discharges are arranged in an ascending order of magnitude. It is  
obvious that the sequence of years will now not be chronological. The  
lowest discharge in this table would indicate that so much discharge  
will surely be there in the river every year. The highest discharge in  
this table would relate to a flood in a hundred years span. Thee  
floods of 25, 50 or 75 years are determined in a similar fashion.  
These flows are adopted as a basis for designing the spacing, heights,  
width and the freeboard of the embankments. As a precautionary step,  
engineers add some more flow to the observed flow and treat that as  
the design discharge.



It is always possible that a hundred year flood may just appear in the  
year following the construction of the structures. In the case of the  
Kosi embankments, the highest ever flood was recorded in 1968, eleven  
years after the construction of the embankments that were designed for  
a 25 year flood cycle. If a structure is designed for the 25 year  
flood cycle, it does not mean that it should fail after that period.  
The concerned departments take advantage of the ignorance of people  
and spread such falsehoods to save their own skin.



Q12. If is not possible to convince Nepal not to release water into  
our rivers and worsen the flood situation here in the plains?



Ans. This is a misleading idea and sometimes it gets headlines in  
newspapers during the flood season. The electronic media is not far  
behind in spreading such misinformation. No river in Nepal has been  
intercepted in such a way that water could be blocked there and its  
subsequent release would cause flooding in the plains of Bihar, U.P,  
or West Bengal.



Barrages have been constructed over the Gandak and the Kosi to  
regulate the flow of the river water into canals. Engineers of the  
water resources department of Bihar are solely responsible for this  
regulation, Barrages are not made for storing water and if any water  
is released, the engineers of Bihar release it on the authority of the  
Government of Bihar. It is done to ensure the safety of the  
structures. Further, the released water can cause damage only within  
the embankments. The propaganda, however, leads people to believe that  
the floods are caused due to the release of waters from Nepal and it  
is responsible for it. Water has been coming from Nepal since time  
immemorial and it is not a new phenomenon.



All these efforts are made to escape the responsibility for the  
floods. There was a time when rats, muskrats and foxes were blamed for  
it. Then the onus fell on the ‘antisocial elements’. Now, it is the  
turn of Nepal. If different parties are ruling the state and the  
center, it becomes easy to blame the center for floods in the states.  
The center, they say is indifferent; it is not taking up the matter of  
high dams with Nepal seriously; and hence it is responsible for the  
floods.



Q13. The government now admits that embankments are a bad idea and  
that it has never been involved in their construction nor will it ever  
be in the future.



Ans. This also is not true. The fact is that the present day rulers,  
or course, did not build the embankments. The earlier government built  
them. Just because the embankment have failed to perform, it suits the  
present day rulers to blame them for folds in these states and thus  
give the message that the earlier governments, and not they, are  
responsible for it.



The annual report of the water resources department of Bihar (1998-99)  
states that, “…. The length of embankments under construction is  
809.40 kilometers and the area to be protected is 6,36,000 hectares.  
So for only a length of 556.69 kilometers has been constructed which  
is partially protecting an area of 3,18,000 hectares. The work was  
suspended for the past six years due to shortage of funds. With the  
funds available in 1998-99, it is proposed to complete the extension  
of the right Bhutahi Balan embankment and the Punpun right embankment  
before June 2000.”41



For the past so many years, these annual reports have been harping on  
the resource crunch while the leaders spared no opportunity to  
ridicule the embankements.



And this is realpolitik. The politicians talk one thing from public  
platforms and their departments carry on with programs, exactly  
contrary to it. Unless efforts are made to counter this double-speak,  
little headway can be made. So long as the government had no money,  
embankments were bad and the moment the resource position improved  
they became acceptable.



Q14. But certainly there are places where people have benefited from  
embankments. Does not that establish their credibility?



Ans. When we talk about benefits from embankments in a certain area,  
we forget about the places where the same embankments have definitely  
harmed people enormously. This happens normally at those places where  
the poor people live and who have less political or social clout than  
those living in the protected areas. Saving townships at the cost of  
villages is a glaring instance of this.