River bank erosion in eastern states of india

By Bikash Kumar Pati

Erosion-prone Satabhaya cluster of hamlets in Orissa’s Kendrapara district for the first time figured in global map of climate change as climate’s first orphan of Orissa. Then the marine drive of Puri drew the attention of environmentalists across the globe. Every year, sea is grasping the land mass and the sea water is walking closer to the residential areas in coast line. Probably this was not enough, rivers started showing their fury through starting erode their banks. When focus lies on sea erosion in Orissa, riverbank erosion could be the largest displacing factor in the state – bigger than all the mining operations and industries in the state put together.

In many parts of the state, it is not the sea but rivers which are giving sleepless nights to thousands of people living along their banks. The reason implies erosion of river banks and constant changes in the course of rivers, which are two universal phenomenons. But story is quite serious in Orissa and not just natural one, contributing to a great human disaster. Hundreds of villages; a majority of them in the coastal belt of the state; are in serious danger of being swept away by the swirling waters of rivers in spate. Nearly the entire coast; from the extreme south to the fertile plains of central Orissa – is now threatened by river bank erosion. Villagers watch with trepidation the rivers inching towards the village. At first, it is the banks of the river, then the agricultural fields, orchards, village commons and finally the thatched houses in the village. Inch by inch, the river swallows them all; like a python engulfing an animal under the spell of anesthesia. One notices everything, feels the thumping of the footsteps of death, but is not able to do anything - not even run away. The villagers can do nothing other than waiting for doomsday when the village completes the journey from geography to history. While the people have no alternative place to move into, the government is yet to even acknowledge the problem. Meanwhile, the scale and intensity of riverbank erosion is continuously on the rise.

Every year, a few villages pass into oblivion meriting no more than an obituary in the form of a news item in the inner pages of newspapers. An apathetic state government, which has a disastrous record in rehabilitating people displaced by industrial projects despite the fact that the rehabilitation packages are funded by the industries, neither has the political will nor the funds to undertake resettlement measures for them. If there has not yet been a hue and cry over the issue, the reason is the fact that the villages are consumed by the rivers one by one, not at one go.
 
The fury

If we look at the victims in urban set-up, Cuttack; the oldest city in the state; figures in the list of endangered patches of river bank erosion. With Mahanadi; the biggest river in the state and its two branches – Kathajodi and Kuakhai – constantly expanding and changing their course, nearly 10,000 people living in a cluster of villages under Cuttack Sadar Assembly constituency are living in perpetual fear of being washed away by the surging waters of the three rivers. Erosion of river banks threatens several villages under Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation too. Kuakhai, once the lifeline of the area, has now become a bane for the people. It has changed course leading to the weakening of the embankment.

In Rajkanika block under Kendrapada district, there is consternation among the people – every time there is a flood in the river Kharasrota. They spend sleepless nights fearing the worst till the flood waters recede. Elsewhere in the district, there is constant erosion of the embankment of river Luna threatening a host of villages in Kendrapada and Garadpur blocks. In the Mahanadi-Chitrotapala Island too, erosion of embankments has emerged as a major problem threatening scores of villages.

Erosion of the Mahanadi embankment has assumed alarming proportions and is giving nightmares to people in scores of villages in Jagatsinghpur district. With river Bhargavi changing course all too often in the recent past, vast areas in Puri district are facing a constant threat of submergence. River Brahmani has already engulfed villages in Sukinda block of Jajpur district. The threat of submergence stares even the people of the coal town of Talcher in the face. Brahmani has wiped out some villages in Bhadrak district too while several others could soon join the list of erstwhile villages. On its part, river Baitarani is all set to take in its lap villages in Bhadrak district and villages under Rajkanika tehsil in neighbouring Kendrapada district. Villages around Bhanjanagar town in Ganjam district are threatened by the erosion of the embankments of Rishikulya, the biggest river in southern Orissa, and Loharakhandi. River Subarnarekha is also in same trend in Balasore district. River Nagavali changing the course at Hatipathara in Raygada town is a classic example of the series.

The list of villages in Orissa threatened by erosion of embankments already runs into hundreds and is steadily growing. Unless remedial steps are taken urgently, it could soon emerge as the single largest factor for displacement in the state.

The reasons

Erosion of river banks is a natural phenomenon that accelerates once the river leaves rocky, mountainous terrain and enters the plains. This is so because the water carrying capacity of a river reduces once it enters the plains. The swirling water of a river in spate looks for an outlet and creates a path for itself creating a branch river in the process. As long as human interference with the course of a river was minimal, rivers had no problem changing course. But once habitations grew in the flood plains and embankments were constructed for flood control, they could not change course at will. They were forced to remain within the confines of their beds, which resulted in erosion of their banks.

There are other factors too aiding the process of erosion. The beds of rivers are getting progressively shallower due to siltation, further restricting their water carrying capacity. The construction of roads and dams etc. also arrests the release of flood waters. As a result, the intensity of floods in the state is continuously on the rise. The water carrying capacity of most embankments constructed in the state is between 9 to 11 lakh cusecs. But during severe floods, the amount of water that flows through the rivers is much greater than their capacity. Then there is this practice of constructing spurs to save a particular town or village, unwittingly endangering other villages and towns in the process. The mushrooming of brick kilns on the banks of rivers, construction of bridges and indiscriminate lifting of sand from the river bed also abet the process of a change in the course of the river. However, the single largest factor responsible for accentuating the problem of erosion is the environmental degradation in the catchments areas of rivers.

The remedy

Unfortunately, government efforts to check erosion of river banks have been marked by some short-term measures like stone patching, construction of spulls, stacking up sand bags there and so on, basing on the political clout. But there has been no systematic effort to address the problem in its entirety so far. Ironically, the government’s efforts to arrest floods through construction of embankments have added substantially to the problem of riverbank erosion in the state. This is so because most rivers in the state flow for less than half the year leading to excessive ‘rainy flow’ or floods though the annual precipitation has remained more or less constant in the state. But given the dimensions of the problem, finding a solution will be well impossible without taking a holistic view and drawing up a long term strategy to combat it. Such a strategy has to be based on the premise that there are no lasting local solutions available. An integrated approach taking the entire state and all the rivers flowing through it is a lasting solution of the problem of erosion.

The answer to the question of how to arrest erosion lays where the process starts and not where the actual erosion takes place. What is needed is an improvement in the general health of the rivers, which would ensure that the flood waters get released into sea over a prolonged period lasting at least nine months a year rather than in three months as is the case at present. The measures that are needed to bring about the necessary improvement are regeneration of forests in the catchments areas of rivers, conservation of soil and rain water.

There is an urgent need for the state to do a thorough stocktaking of the situation and devise sustainable ways and means to prevent this phenomenon from snowballing into a major disaster in the near future. The fact that the remedies available are daunting should not deter the state government from initiating them. For one thing, it should make all out efforts to improve the general health of rivers so that they maintain their flow for the greater part of the year. For another, it has to rethink its policy of embanking rivers and find alternative ways of controlling floods. No matter how difficult these twin tasks prove, the government has no choice but to take them since it simply does not have the wherewithal to rehabilitate the huge number of people who stand to be displaced by riverbank erosion in the coming years. Prevention, as popular notion, is better than cure – and cheaper too.

Source : Orissadiary