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Where floodwaters refuse to go away

Sunny Sebastian

Kavas village remains inundated even after three weeks of torrential rain which lashed the area.

BARMER: Water has been both agony and ecstasy for the residents of the Thar, the most populated desert in the world. From a situation when children of school-going age used to get scared at the shower of a few water drops from the sky— what the rest of the world calls rain— the area had too much of a good thing this season.

And the worst parts of it is that the floodwaters got collected in the villages of Barmer in an area of 245 sq km on August 24 (Indian Space Research Organisation estimates), are refusing to go away. The apparently sandy terrain has several hundreds of feet deep layers of gypsum beneath it.

It may be part of the black humour taking rounds in Barmer these days but the NGOs working in the area talk about residents of Malva closing their doors to stop water from entering the rooms when the rain began on August 19, started inundating the saucer-shaped village, mostly inhabited by Muslims.

According to Farhad Contractor of Sambhav, an NGO working in the area, lack of experience with water too cost many lives. Malva accounted for 36 deaths while three children are officially termed as missing. Unlike Malva people, the population of Kavas, some 100 km apart, was told about the impending currents at least a 24 hours before.

"In fact Kavas has been experiencing inundation in the recent times. There were flood-like situations in Kavas in 1989 and 1994 as well," Thaga Ram, a social worker pointed out. "The local residents did not take the warnings seriously. In the past there had been no casualties as there had been no serious flooding," he noted.

Against a normal rainfall of 277 mm annually, Barmer received 678 mm this season. In 1994, it was 608 mm in the district. The local residents attribute the torrent in one direction this time to the breach of a series of dams built in the upper areas of Barmer and Jaisalmer.

The biggest challenge before the authorities in Barmer is disposal of water in Malva and Kavas, the two towns that together accounted for 104 deaths in the wake of the August 21 downpour. Floodwaters are posing a similar problem in at least two-dozen villages and also to Uttarlai, a strategic airbase on the western front.

After initial prevarication, the administration has taken some steps to drain out water. "The water level is coming down. We have started constructing a channel of four kms length and a depth of 20 feet to drain out water at Naya Bhurtia," said Subhir Kumar, Barmer Collector.

The salt river Luni is some 67 km away and Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh, who toured the area with a team of academicians from The Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur, has warned against draining out water which would mean wasting it.

"The water should be utilized for growing Rabi crop and horticulture crops. The Government should make available and subsidise water pumps and channel it to distances of 2-3 kms for agriculture use," opines Rajendra Singh, who has successfully tested this method in Alwar district.

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