India Floods Leave Millions Homeless

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India Floods Leave Millions Homeless

 

By WASBIR HUSSAIN

..c The Associated Press

 

LAHORIGHAT, India (Aug. 15) - The flooded Brahmaputra River has cut a vicious

swath through India's remote northeast, killing hundreds of people, leveling

homes, washing away schools and leaving millions homeless.

 

Arun Kalita's village, Sootea in Assam state, was swept away, and he now

lives with his wife and four children in a tarpaulin-roofed riverbank shelter

in this rain-drenched town, depending on government handouts to stave off

hunger for himself, his wife and his children.

 

Kalita is one of the lucky ones - he and his family survived. But he's

haunted by the memory of the home he lost.

 

``We just kept watching from a distance and could do nothing,'' said Kalita,

57, his voice choked with emotion. ``My home now lies on the river bed.''

 

Annual monsoon flooding has wreaked havoc across South Asia, killing more

than 900 people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal since June and displacing or

trapping about 25 million more.

 

Some of the most isolated victims are here in Assam, along the rugged

foothills of the Himalayas. At least 39 people have died and nearly a quarter

of the state's 26 million residents are now homeless.

 

After two weeks of destruction, the rains have slowed and the floodwaters

have started receding in much of Assam. But the monsoon-driven weather is

unpredictable, and officials worry that intense rains could begin again,

raising the water level and bringing more flooding.

 

This is the way it often goes with the monsoons. Intense rains are drenching

some parts of South Asia while other regions are slowly drying out and still

others - including 12 states in India - are facing one of the worst droughts

in years.

 

In all, monsoon floods have killed at least 323 people in India, according to

official estimates.

 

Another 157 people have died in neighboring Bangladesh. Water levels in the

Ganges, Brahmaputra and Jamuna rivers, which had receded last week, began

rising again Wednesday following fresh downpours in the country's north,

officials there said.

 

But the highest death toll has been in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, where

at least 424 people have either been swept away by swirling floodwaters or

crushed under mudslides in remote mountain villages.

 

Relief officials throughout South Asia are now trying to prevent waterborne

diseases such as diarrhea and typhoid, which are deadly in impoverished

regions.

 

When the waters come, their destruction is often absolute. In recent days in

eastern India, a postman was swept away, a 7-year-old boy drowned and two men

died when their boat sank in the Gandak River.

 

An overflowing river is now threatening to inundate low-lying areas around

Patna, the populous capital city of Bihar state, relief officials said

Thursday.

 

In Assam, thousands of stranded people have started returning to their ruined

villages, hoping to rebuild their homes and begin their lives afresh.

 

The monsoon rains last until late September in this part of India, and with

the government lacking the resources to build dams, it is flooded nearly

every year.

 

``There is still some hope for those who have their homes intact. But for the

families whose homes have been completely washed away by the floodwaters,

life will have no meaning unless the government provides land and money,''

said Dandi Nath Saikia, headman of Sootea village.

 

It's the same story for thousands of villages along the Brahmaputra River,

which originates in China's Tibet region as the Tsangpo, flows down nearly

500 miles across the Assam plains and into Bangladesh before spilling into

the Bay of Bengal.

 

For hundreds of thousands of people, the river offers livelihood for six

months a year. They earn their livings ferrying people from one village to

another in mechanized boats, or trading in vegetables and fish.

 

But with the monsoon rains, the river becomes a destroyer.

 

In Boralimari, another Assam village, an elder gestures to a spot covered

with a small body of water.

 

``Look, that is the place where our village high school and junior school

stood,'' said Aminul Islam. Now, there is no trace of the buildings.

 

Mizanur Rahman, a farmer living on a mud embankment in the village of

Rowmari, accepts the monsoon misery as part of life.

 

``I have nowhere else to go,'' he said. ``I hate the floods that come almost

every year, but I have to live with it.''

 

08/15/02 20:46 EDT

 

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.