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SMALL RELIEF: A child carrying rice after relief supplies arrive in Sitamari district 170km north of Patna, the capital of eastern Bihar state. -- PHOTO: AFP
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IN SAMASTIPUR - MR JAI Krishan, president of the Birisinghpur village council in the water-logged Samastipur district of eastern Bihar state, is a worried man.
The villagers have accused him of culpability in the state government's failure to provide flood relief to some 10,000 affected people in his and surrounding villages.
The whispers have become louder in recent days as the victims' hunger and anger grow.
'He has locked up whatever the government has given for distribution,' charged Mr Parbhusan, 42, a farm hand, as he stood with a group of angry men across the road from Mr Krishan's small pharmacy where the village chief doubles up as 'doctor' in the absence of a hospital in the area.
Birsinghpur, an impoverished village made poorer by the current devastating floods, is 100km north of the state capital Patna and is linked by a road rutted by potholes and pond-sized puddles that makes the journey there a nightmare.
The road has always been bad but, after the rains and floods, it has become almost impassable.
Mr Parbhusan was one of thousands who fled their homes and took shelter on a high embankment as swirling flood waters entered the villages last month.
'We have not gotten even a pinch of salt from the government in the last 20 days and he (Mr Krishan) has been distributing it to his people under the cover of darkness,' he alleged.
Mr Krishan is aware of the charges.
'What can I do?' he asked in exasperation, pulling out a folded letter he received from the state government's development officer for the area, Mr Om Prakash Mandal.
The letter, written in Hindi and dated Aug 6, said that only 100 people in the locality are eligible for relief assistance.
No reason was given for this in the letter, which was shown to The Straits Times.
'How can I distribute relief to only 100 people when 4,000 people are living out in the open without food and water? There will be a massacre,' said Mr Krishnan.
Birsinghpur is one of 587 villages in Samastipur district battered by floods, said to be the worst in living memory.
Although the waters have started to recede in northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal, monsoon rains lashed parts of western India yesterday.
Downpours cut off more than 400 villages in western Gujarat state, killing at least seven people.
In Bihar, Mr Manoj Srivastava, secretary of disaster management for the state government, said the floods had taken 105 lives across Bihar, affected 12 million people and destroyed or damaged 75,000 houses.
But the people of Birsinghpur and other inundated villages have no time for statistics.
They showed their anger when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar accompanied ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil on a tour of the flood-affected areas in the district on Tuesday.
The crowd shouted slogans and demanded the Chief Minister's resignation even as he spelt out steps to ameliorate their suffering.
District administrator N. Saravanan Kumar is candid in admitting that it has not been possible for relief to reach all the flood-hit areas because of the sheer magnitude of the crisis.
But he said that if not for the administration's disaster preparedness, the impact of the floods would have been much worse.
He added that, in the past three days, the administration had got its act together and air force helicopters had dropped 4,000 5kg food packets in the worst-hit areas.
The government had also deployed about 500 private boats to distribute food and four army boats to take medical teams to inaccessible areas.
'Luckily, there has been no epidemic so far. We are keeping our fingers crossed and praying. The worst is not over yet,' said Dr Kumar.
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