When dams swelled

DIONNE BUNSHA in Sangli and Pune

"EVERYONE is a zero. Everything was washed away," says Dastagir Fakir from Sakharwadi village in Sangli. That is the common refrain in districts worst affected by the floods caused by the release of water from a series of dams along the Krishna river. "When the water level started rising, our cattle started getting very restless and upset. We had to cut their tethers and let them go," says Dastagir. He had spent Rs.4,000 to sow his one acre with soyabean. It is now submerged. "On the first day, we were in chest-deep water. The next day, people from the village came to rescue us and took us to parts of Bhilawadi village that were not submerged. But water started rising there as well. And today, seven days later, they rescued us from the village." Now, Dastagir and others have been crammed into a small two-room school building that is functioning as a relief camp.

When 49 dams in Maharashtra swelled owing to heavy rains, water was released, flooding areas more than 100 km away. In Sangli and Kolhapur, 70 villages were marooned. Around 2.5 lakh people in Pune, Sangli, Kolhapur and Satara had to be evacuated with the help of the Army and the Navy. Of them more than 1.2 lakh were from Sangli alone. However, the government says that the statistics is incomplete, the situation is far worse and information about more submerged areas is pouring in.

In Sangli city, more than 20,000 people are in relief camps after water released from the Koyna dam, around 120 km away, flooded their homes. Afzana Sheikh had to abandon her house barely two days after she returned home from the hospital with her baby delivered prematurely. "There was an announcement at 3 p.m. and in two hours, the water was knee-deep. By evening, it was up to our waist," said Afzana. "First, we ran to a school nearby. But the water reached there too. Then, we went to a local marriage hall, but it also got flooded. Then, the municipal trucks brought us to this relief camp. It has been 12 days since we left home. By now our house must be totally in water."

Few people have faith that the government will help them get back on their feet again. "No one is thinking of what will happen after we leave here [the relief camp]. We will have to start from scratch. They are giving us food, but we are ready to be hungry for a few days if they help us set up our homes again," said Yuvraj Kamble, a construction worker. "Government officials have told us that there will be a survey and we will get compensation after we go back home. But how can we start life if we have absolutely nothing, not even a stove to cook?" he asked. "Once we leave here, there will be no support. They will forget about us. Not even a single councillor has come here to meet us." Even the Chief Minister's visit to the relief camp did not inspire much confidence in the administration.

In Pune city and its adjoining villages people had to be evacuated when the waters of the Pahuna, Mulshi and Mutha rivers swelled. Kausalya Belim lives on the edge of a drainage line that flows along the Mutha. "The sewage couldn't flow into the river and so it flooded our homes," says Kausalya. Now, the water has abated and people can go back to their broken homes, but the struggle to get relief could sink them. Officials are not surveying houses properly and there are not enough compensation application forms available. Moreover, each form has to be testified, so people will have to run around government offices for the sarkari chaap (government seal).

While the water receded in Pune within a few days, Sangli and Kolhapur, further south, remained submerged. The Krishna river or its tributaries flows southwards through all these districts. "Koyna, one of the largest dams, is after Pune and released water towards Sangli and Kolhapur. The amount of water released was much more, that's why the intensity was greater," says environmentalist Vijay Paranjpye. "It's also a cumulative effect. As the river flows south and more overflowing tributaries keep joining the Krishna, the amount of water in the river also increases." There are 34 dams in the Krishna basin, and as each released water, it created a flood further downstream.

The Maharashtra government also blames the Almatti dam authorities in Karnataka, further south on the Krishna, for not discharging sufficient water. "This has resulted in a back-effect of water which is trapped. That's why water levels are not falling quickly in places like Sangli, though we are releasing large amounts of water," said S.V. Sodal, Secretary for Water Resources. "We had a similar swell in the Koyna dam in 1997, but the flood abated within three days because the Almatti dam had not yet been built then. This time, the Koyna dam level rose to 543 metres, three metres above the danger level. But it has fallen by only a metre in three days."

Some of the damage could have been averted if the dam's flood danger area had not been encroached, says Paranjpye. "Each dam authority delineates the right of way of the river. No one can infringe this. But it is blatantly violated. That's why so many suffered, particularly in cities," he said. "Dams provide people with a false sense of security, which is why they encroach on the dam area. But dam's don't stop floods. They reduce the frequency and increase the severity of flooding," says Paranjpye. "For many years, there was no flooding, so people were lulled into a false security and encroached on the river bed. It's like seeing an elephant is hurtling towards you, but yet you insist on standing in its way." But many like Dastagir, marooned in their village, never knew they were in the way of the elephant.