Late one evening last week, there was restlessness in Kundah village on the eastern bank of the Kosi river. Ram Jatan Sada was busy loading his household goods into a tractor trolley parked at some distance.
An angry Kosi had taken over a large tract of land next to a government primary school, a few feet from his hut, where he has been living with his wife and three children for almost two decades.
Other villagers were helping Saada, while some were cursing the government for not doing anything to stop the spate (a river changing its course) due to heavy siltation.
Villagers say that as the monsoon rains ended and the river level receded in the first week of October, the Kosi, laden with silt and debris, started moving slowly from the left, washing away the land and carrying away 14 huts.
“I never thought that Kosi Maiya (mother) would take over my house again,” laments Sada, as his wife fills the caraan with steel plates and spoons.
Like nearly a million people living on the banks of the Kosi River between two 126-km-long embankments built by the Center with the help of Russian engineers in 1963, Sada was first displaced nearly two decades ago.
“I built my hut here thinking it would be safe after we lost our previous house in the river,” says the daily wage labourer, whose two sons had returned to Delhi earlier in the week after celebrating Chhath Puja with the family.
Yet, far away, villagers acknowledge that this time there has been a prompt response from the Water Resources Department (WRD) to the encroachment. They say the reason is clear – the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections will be held on November 6 and 11 and the counting of votes will take place on November 14.
“Chunau ka time hai (It’s election time),” says Mohammed Islam, another villager, who is watching the WRD sub-divisional officer (SDO) of Massey block supervise about 20 laborers carrying sandbags to save the village’s only school from collapse.
On the condition of anonymity, the SDO says that he has been working there for the last 10 days.
He explains that Friday was the last day when they could do so. “Till October 31, we can stop erosion under flood management (rules). After that, we will have to submit a separate plan for approval under the anti-erosion plan.”
river management
Like many rivers originating in the Himalayas, the Kosi has a history of changing its course both eastward and westward, and over its long history it has caused widespread flooding in the plains of Nepal and northern Bihar.
Between 1736 and 1949, it shifted approximately 249.5 kilometers westward, earning the tagline “Sorrow of Bihar” due to repeated devastating floods that affected settlements, agriculture, and infrastructure.
“To prevent frequent floods and tame the river, former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru decided to build two embankments from Nepal to Kaparia. An MoU was signed with the Nepalese government and earthen embankments were built with the help of Russian engineers,” says Professor Dinesh Mishra of the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur, who studies the Kosi river basin.
According to official records, in 1955 the Bihar Legislative Assembly approved a rehabilitation policy for 1.92 lakh people stranded in the 1.2 lakh hectare embankment area in Sapaul, Saharsa, Madhepura and Araria districts, providing them free land and money to build houses.
However, no land was made available for agricultural purposes as there was no government land available outside the embankments; Many of them, as usual, returned to live in huts inside the embankments. As one moves towards Kundah, hundreds of huts and a few concrete houses can be seen between the two embankments.
According to the 2011 census, 9.8 lakh people in 380 villages were living inside the embankments in Bihar.
As a larger population was living inside the embankments, political pressure increased on successive governments to provide basic health, education and road facilities. Rajendra Jha, who runs Kosi Sadakat Ashram, a social organization that works on water management in the area, says the government forgot its plan to relocate everyone and provide the facilities demanded.
He says that even though the embankments controlled the river and reduced floods to some extent, they destroyed local agriculture by creating waterlogging between and outside the embankments.
“I was born here in 1952 and there was no waterlogging then. It started after 1963 when embankments were built,” says Jha. Jha says that as agricultural production declined in the Kosi region, it led to migration, although the government is trying to revive local income through alternatives such as housing and fish production.
In August 2008, Kosi moved eastwards, breaching the embankment about 13 km upstream of the Kosi Barrage in Nepal, managed by the Bihar government, causing massive flooding and killing about 500 people in northern Bihar and affecting 3.3 million people living in a 3,700 sq km area in the state, according to official records.
After the floods, the Bihar government, with assistance from the World Bank, began strengthening embankments by building embankments to prevent breaches. However, not much silt was cleared from the river. “It is very difficult to desilt the Kosi because of the heavy sediment flow every year and the river often changing its course,” says a former director of the Bihar Water Resources Department on condition of anonymity.
In the Union Budget 2024, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced Rs 8,000 crore project to strengthen the western embankment. “We are demanding that the eastern embankment also needs to be strengthened as the Kosi moved towards the east in 2008,” says Amit Anand, a social activist from Saharsa.
Union Cabinet approved in 2025 The Rs 6,282 crore Kosi Mechi Inter-State River Linking Project to carry excess water from the Kosi River in the monsoon months to the Mahananda River Basin via the Mechi River through remodeling and improvement of two existing canals.
The project, which has been in the works for the last 10 years, is scheduled to be completed by 2029. According to a Press Information Bureau statement, the link project is estimated to provide additional annual irrigation of 210,516 hectares in the Kharif season in Araria, Purnia, Kishanganj and Katihar districts of Bihar.
However, the Environmental Impact Assessment for Kosi-Mechi acknowledged the project’s inability to address siltation or watershed issues due to funding limitations, raising doubts about sustainability. In 2024, people affected by the Kosi flood protested against the project, demanding priority for flood relief on the new linking. In January 2025, the Patna High Court reviewed the progress of Kosi water management schemes, including Kosi-Mechi interlinking and flood victim rehabilitation, and urged speedy implementation of silt-release schemes in North Bihar.
Politics
According to Madhepura-based political activist Pranab Prakash, the Kosi region, which has 13 assembly seats spread across four districts, has been the epicenter of the socialist movement and does not appear to have the communist influence seen in southern and eastern Bihar. He says, “It is from this area that Sharad Yadav, a socialist icon, defeated another socialist leader Lalu Prasad in 1989.”
In 2020, the National Democratic Alliance won 10 seats in the belt, of which eight went to Janata Dal (United) and two to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) won the remaining three seats. It was believed that RJD’s poor performance in Kosi and neighboring Seemanchal regions in the 2020 assembly elections was one of the reasons for the grand alliance’s defeat.
RJD’s Legislative Council Member (MLC) from Kosi region Ajay Kumar Singh admits, “The performance was not as per our expectations.” He claimed, “This time we will perform much better.” Bihar’s Product Minister and JDU leader Ratnesh Sada claims that the NDA will perform better than 2020 and win in this region. “The work done by the Nitish Kumar government in the region, from Kosi river management to infrastructure development, has transformed the region. We will win all seats here.”
There is mixed reaction in Kundah village.
72-year-old Kaleshwar Rai says that no Chief Minister has done work like Nitish Kumar. “In 20 years, Nitish Kumar has worked for the people. My pension has increased.” from 1,100 400 more women have got 10,000. The roads are in good condition and we do not face any law and order problems.
But Madhukant Chaudhary says, “Health and education are in bad shape. Even for minor illnesses, we have to go to hospitals in Saharsa or Patna. The school buildings are in a dilapidated condition.”
Mohammad Badru says that the playground and some part of the building of the only school in the village have been ruined. “Children now have to study in the open. After a part of the school building in Kosi got submerged four years ago, we raised money to build a tin shed over an open classroom.”
Sada, who is listening to the conversation, is only worried about his house. The government could have saved it, he tells everyone and immediately adds that he has no “ill will” towards Nitish Kumar. “If they had started anti-erosion work earlier, my hut could have been saved. Now I have to find a new place.”
