Diara : Lands of Promised Deluge

Numerous rivers emanate from the lap of the Himalayas and descend into the North Indian plains. In the monsoons, these rivers cascade down the mountains carrying enormous quantities of water and detritus from their catchment. As these rivers flow into the plains the current slows down and the rivers widen and become shallow. If the monsoon rains are intense, this can lead to flooding. Flooding due to high water discharge is a recurrent phenomenon, especially in the case of North Bihar in eastern India – a place where nearly 76 percent of the population lives in flood prone areas.

 

The state of Bihar suffers from a bane of abundance - that of water resources. Its geographical area is 2.8 percent and its population 8 percent of the country’s, but 17 percent of the flood-prone areas and 36 percent of the flood-affected population of the country belong to Bihar.

The floods were an integral part of the rivers and the immediacy of the problem at the hands of the first Prime Minister of independent India, led him to call for urgent and temporary measures, the embankment of rivers. The British had already made similar interventions and retreated as soon as it was realised that embankments only accentuate the problem and serve a limited role in terms of flood control.

At the time of independence, Bihar had 160 km of embankments and 2.5 million hectares of its area flood prone, which today has increased to 3,746 km and 6.8 million hectares respectively.

In the land falling within embankments which are locally known as diara, the intensity as well as duration of floods tend to increase. This has resulted in calamitous consequences over the years – more so for people living in the diara. Waterlogging and the spread of water-borne diseases have increased since the coming up of embankments.

Diara lands account for 9.61 percent of the total area of the state of Bihar. People in these lands have to face the wrath of the rivers they have worshipped for centuries. Diara as a term has multifarious meanings.

The first context in which diara is understood relates to its spatiality. Diara as an area is shaped like a diya (an Indian earthen lamp) – low in the middle and gradually rising as one moves away from the centre and being filled with water for most parts of the year.

Second, diara is used to ascribe to the relative backwardness of the place where people still use diyas as a source of light.

Third meaning of the term diara which also conflicts with the former identifies diara (di-ara) as a place where people do not light a fire close to their homes due to the fear of homes catching fire, as they are mostly made of bamboo, reeds and dry wild grasses found abundantly in the area.

The Gandak is a major river of North Bihar which has been embanked in large parts of its stretch through the state. The Gandak flows for 260 km in Bihar before draining into the Ganges. Approximately 80 percent of its catchment in the state is flood prone.

People who live in the diara of Gandak River have adapted themselves to the vagaries of the river. They have to live with floods, riverbank erosion and sand casting of agricultural as well as homestead land. The erosion has historically caused large populations to move outside the embankments or face constant displacement by the river.

“Bath in the Gandak river gives the benefit of Vajapeya sacrifice and attainment of abode in the Sun world (Suryaloka).”

- Mahabharata, Aranyak Parva 82/9

The river draws more inordinate sacrifices from the people residing near its banks than the spiritual endowments it bestows upon them.

Gandak has shifted eastward by 105 km over its mega fan in the period 1935–1975. This exhibits how easily this river can erode large stretches in the plains, uprooting life and livelihoods in its wake.

Lands in the countryside are locally termed as ‘ojadi lands’. The embankment clearly demarcates the border between the diara and ojadi lands for the people of the region. ojadi is a Bhojpuri word which loosely translates to ‘deserted’ or ‘abandoned’ in English.

Floods as a source of irrigation as well as a source of soil fertility aided agricultural production in the region. Gradually, as other sources of irrigation sprang up in the 1970s and 80s, such as canal systems and groundwater pumping, dependency on rivers in general and floods in particular, reduced.

 

While floods provide the much needed irrigation for crops, people in the past would adjust to the vagaries of the river. Even if they faced problems living near the river, they did not move out to the ojadi lands as they would lose their livelihoods.

Crops like paddy, wheat, pulses and sugarcane used to grow in the diara using floodwaters as a source of irrigation. At the same time, in the ojadi (countryside) crops like millet, corn and sweet potato were cultivated. Farming in flood affected (diara) areas is highly profitable compared to the flood protected areas (ojadi).

Naya Tola Bishambharpur village lies on the riverside of the eastern embankment of the Gandak River in the district of Pashchim Champaran. It is a village of 103 households. The village was settled on an old embankment around 1992 after a major portion of their village was eroded by the river. There are families in the village who have been forced to relocate more than ten times in a generation as the Gandak River regularly erodes its banks and shifts its course. For the last 35 years, the village has been spared by the river as it moved towards the west.

While on the one hand the river swallows land on a continuous basis, it enriches all the land it floods with fertile silt. Still, a perpetual fear that rankles in the minds of people in the diara, is the erosion of their agricultural land and houses.

 

“Who will go to ojadi to burn and die. People are starving there due to lack of food.”

- Ram Raj Sahni, a resident of Naya Tola Bishambharpur village

 

“Ojadi people forgot about the diara when the canal came up in their place. All the crops could grow there now with canal water.”

- Chandar Yadav, a resident of Naya Tola Bishambharpur village

        

The majority of houses in the diara are made of locally available grasses, reeds and bamboo. Kutcha houses take five days to construct and only require one hour to dismantle and taken somewhere else to be set up again.

As all the material for the construction of a kutcha house is obtained from the river bed, the cost of repair of these houses, which is a ritual after the floods every year, is also minimal. It saves people from an extensive monetary damage if they have brick and mortar structures.

There was a paucity of boats for movement in earlier times. Therefore, in time of extreme floods, roofs of these houses were put down in flood waters and were made into floating platforms which would then be used by the people to move to the higher ground.

In the front of every house in the diara stands a cylindrical structure of prime importance called bheris (silos).

 

Made of locally available materials, it is used to store the harvest of the year. The elevation of these bheris saves the produce from getting damp at the time of floods as well as protecting it from insects and rodents. As it is a vertical structure, and flood waters dampen the grains slowly from below, most of the stored grains can be saved in the case of high floods.

 

”Earlier people from flood protected areas used to come to diara for work. Diara was the breadbasket of the region.”

 

- Chandar Yadav, a resident of Naya Tola Bishambharpur village

While wooden boats locally called Dengis are more prevalent as they were in the past, metal barges are also being used for transportation of produce as well as rescue at the time of floods.

“We don’t need to provide irrigation for sugarcane and paddy. It is done by floods. For Rabi crop too, we provide only one turn of irrigation. A cattle entails no cost of upkeep in the diara. We just untie them and they can graze all they can. There is ample green fodder everywhere because of the river.”

- Harkesh Yadav, a farmer and a cattle rearer, Naya Tola Bishambharpur village

Gandak River has eroded vast stretches of land over the years. In Bettiah Raj, which was the third largest zamindari estate in Bihar since the sixteenth century, land eroded by the river was not taxed. The land eroded by the river was termed as Gangshikasht which translates to being ‘defeated’ by the river. At the same time, land near the river from which revenue was collected was termed Gangabarar which means ‘standing strong’ in the face of the river.

This shows the paramount significance accorded to diara lands for revenue collection in history as this would have required intense supervision and inspection of lands in those times

In common parlance, floods are seen as a problem, a situation we need to overcome. Though there are some pressing issues which need to be taken care of urgently, floods in the diara are seen more as an event rather than a disaster. No one wants the floods to go away entirely. As people cannot transform the river, more so when it is in spate, they have adapted themselves to adjust to the vagaries of the river.