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Floods hit Punjab, 15 dead,
thousands homeless, army out
Apathy mars relief operations, Badal visits flood hit but
watches
masala film too
Sach Kanwal Singh
CHANDIGARH:
Punjab has been hit by floods, the worst in 20 years. Large swathes
of eight of Punjab's districts are under water. Nealry 15 people
have died so far after torrential rains lashed the state and more
than a 100 villages are under River Sutlej's waters. Relief and
rescue operations have barely taken off, and hundreds of more
villages are living life on the edge as alerts have been sounded for
all areas alongside the banks of Beas, Ravi and Ghaggar too.
 While everyone,
including the government, agreed that the situation was grim and
even the army had to be called out, the establishment's apathy was
writ across the state. People were mostly left to fend for
themselves and the idea of a disaster management plan was merely a
rumour.
Hundreds of
villagers in various parts of the state are still marooned and
stranded on the rooftops in many villages. Transport and
communication lies in a shambles.
Witnesses in
Ferozepur and Moga district said that at least 25 more villages were
affected as ravaging water from fresh breaches in
Sutlej river
entered inhabited areas. By the time breaches in the embankment of
Sutlej near Giddervindi and Sanghera villages of Ferozepur and
Jalandhar districts had been plugged, fresh ones were reported near
Madanpura and Bagge villages in Ferozepur.
Punjab Chief
Minister Parkash Singh Badal made an aerial surveu, then sat in a
motorboat and swirled around the flooded area, but after all the
photo-ops were over, he checked into a cinema hall in Jalandhar with
many equally concerned officials and leaders in tow to watch
Bollywood starrer Singh Is Kinng. "I haven't seen a movie in 15
years," he said by way of defence. Well,
Punjab
hasn't seen such floods in 20 years, but does it even matter?
Next day,
Sukhbir Singh Badal was circling around the flood waters,
photographers clicking himrather than the plight of the people.
Everyone loves a good drought, wrote
India's
fascinatingly engaged journalist P Sainath. Well, everyone in
politics loves a good flood too.
In Saura village
in Ropar, three persons were killed. Some 15 houses collapsed in
Tarn Taran and
Amritsar
districts. Sewage entered homes in Phagwara, Jalandhar and
Hoshiarpur. In Amritsar and Tarn Taran districts, Bablu (5) and
Rajrani (35) died in a house collapse while Balwinder Singh (35) of
Ubokae village was killed in another one.
In Makhu town,
the situation had become so alarming that it was placed on high
alert. ALl the rivers were still swollen and with the Bhakhra-Beas
Management Board (BBMB) set to release more water to protect its
dams, whose reservoirs are reported to have filled up to the brim,
situation will become only more grim.
Heavy rains
continued in the catchment areas of both
Sutlej and Beas
rivers.
It took the army
jawans much manpower and equipment to evacuate some 200 persons in
Kapurthala and Jalandhar districts and a similar number in different
villages of Ferozepur district. At least 1000 villagers were
evacuated from villages near Fazilka town in southern Ferozpur.
Patiala
and Sangrur district villages are now on high alert. With Ghaggar
too in spate, Khannauri and Moonak are having sleepless nights.
Standing crops,
mostly paddy, in thousands of acres stands destroyed. Badal has
ordered a special ‘Girdawari’ to assess the loss. Damage was
substantial in
Amritsar,
Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Kapurthala, Moga, Jalandhar, Ferozepur and
Ropar districts.
In
Patiala,
the district administration has alrrted villagers in Patran and
Samana subdivisions to be ready for evacuation. Ghaggar has been
witnessing sudden gush of water as rain water from Markanda, Tangri
and Pachidara caused flood like situation.
A major portion
of a road next to an under-construction shopping mall caved in
Amritsar, leading to cracks in nearby houses.
20 August, 2008
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