Bihar floods sit on 27 lakh people across 13 districts as the Ganga eases a few centimetres

About 27 lakh people in 13 Bihar districts are living with floodwater after the Ganga, Kosi, Gandak, Budhi Gandak, Bagmati, Punpun and Ghaghra all ran above danger marks. Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary said on Monday that the Ganga had dropped 17 to 18 centimetres and that more relief should arrive in two or three days. Farakka Barrage was still pushing about 1.5 million cusecs downstream. At Gandhi Ghat in Patna the river stood at 50.41 metres at 6 a.m., 1.57 metres above the danger line. At Sultanganj in Bhagalpur it touched 36.77 metres, a shade above the 2021 mark of 36.75 metres.

Choudhary flew over Vaishali and Saran, walked through camps at Hajipur and Sonepur, and inspected community kitchens in Vaishali and Bhagalpur with deputy chief minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary. He served food in one camp and ate there. The state has started paying Rs 4 lakh to the dependents of people who drowned. He said every house would be surveyed once the water falls and that crop losses would be assessed. Tejashwi Yadav wrote to the prime minister asking for a national disaster declaration and Rs 5,000 crore.

The operational ledger is large and uneven across the day's briefings. One official count put 190 kitchens in the field and 1,429 boats on the water. Another, earlier, put the kitchens at 80 and the boats at 1,158, with 27 SDRF and seven NDRF teams. September rainfall over the state has been 69.1 mm, about 55 percent above the normal for the first week. The Gandak was above danger at Dumariaghat and Hajipur, the Kosi at Baltara and Kursela, the Budhi Gandak at Khagaria, the Ganga at Hathidah, Bhagalpur, Kahalgaon, Buxar and Munger, the Punpun at Sripalpur, the Bagmati at Benibad and the Ghaghra at Darauli.

At least 20 people have died in the present spell, according to The Hindu's tally of the past two weeks. That number will move as house surveys begin. Bihar floods on a calendar. The Kosi's embankments, the Ganga's backwater when Farakka releases, and a wet first week of September are a known combination. What is new in this cycle is the political sequence. Choudhary is in his first full monsoon as chief minister. The opposition's letter to Delhi is the standard next move. The Centre's reply will decide whether the Rs 4 lakh deaths and the kitchen network stay a state account.

Engineers have been told to keep machines ready. People in the low villages have been told to stay off the riverbanks. Those two sentences are the entire public-safety policy until the gauge at Gandhi Ghat falls through the danger line and stays there. Choudhary's 17 centimetres is a start. It is not a withdrawal.