How and why did the rivers curse Bihar? It all began with a group of young politicians in the 1950s. To them goes the credit for pushing the idea of building embankments. This was done in the name of trying to tame the rivers of the state. In the 200 years between 1736 and 1936, the Kosi migrated almost 120 km westward of Purnea to meet Lalit Narain Mishra, a young politician, near his village, Balua. The plains of North Bihar are drained by an extensive network of 13 rivers that, like the Kosi, meander through the plains they have helped create over millions of years (see box: The roaming rivers ).

However, with Lalit Narain Mishra it was different. He took flood control measures to be his mission in life. Perhaps he hoped that he would manage to rid the state of floods. Some people in Bihar insist, he did it in the hope of making money. Mishra was a very successful politician. He would later hold several cabinet posts. His last portfolio was that of Union railways minister. In 1953, when the floods came, a hasty two-day whirlwind tour of prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was put together from August 12, on the insistence of Lalit Narain Mishra, Hari Nath Mishra and S N Agarwal of the Congress. A case for embanking the Kosi was pushed and lobbied for with great vehemence, says D K Mishra. The Union government set up a team of experts comprising K L Rao, an engineer who later became the Union irrigation minister, and Kanwar Sain, vice-chairperson of the Central Water and Power Commission. The team was sent to China in May 1954 to study the flood control works carried out on the Yellow river or Hwang Ho. It was recommended that the Kosi be embanked to control floods.

At this point it was forgotten that the Yellow river had frequently broken its embankments. There were terrible floods in China in 1933, which had led to 50 breaches affecting 3.6 million people and inundating 11,000 sq km. In the 100 years between 1855 and 1955, the embankments had failed on more than 200 occasions. It is not surprising today that there is not a single embankment on the Kosi that has not suffered a breach.

Questions have always been raised regarding the soundness of this decision. "The decision to embank the Kosi was a political one necessitated by extra-technical considerations. The entire debate on flood control techniques, which was going on since the construction and subsequent demolition of the Damodar embankments in the 1850s, was thrown to the winds,' says Mishra (see box: The Damodar blunder) .

"What is also amazing is that the plan to embank the Kosi was approved even before the experts' committee was set up. Since the Kosi embankment plan was approved by the Union government in December 1953 and the experts sent to China in May 1954, they already knew what they had to recommend,' he adds.

Resistance came in the form of a people's movement and from official quarters. Rai Bahadur A C Chatterjee, the then chief engineer of Bettiah Raj (West Champaran), at a meeting held on November 20, 1954 under the chairpersonship of Sri Krishna Sinha, the then chief minister of Bihar, opposed the proposal. Parmeshwar Kunwar, a freedom fighter, was arrested and sent to jail in October 1954 for protesting in front of the president of India, Rajendra Prasad, during a public meeting. Later Kunwar became so popular that he was elected four times to the legislative assembly (1957-77) from Mahisi constituency in Saharsa district.

Even elsewhere people were up in arms. A plan to raise embankments along the river Kamla was opposed under the leadership of Ram Parikshan Pandey of village Pirhi, in the Babu Barhi block of Madhubani district. The people feared that the embankments would impede drainage, create waterlogging and deprive the area of the fertile silt. The movement succeeded in keeping 13 km of the Kamla unfettered by embankments.

But all this did not deter politicians. An organisation known as Bharat Sevak Samaj ( bss ), had already been set up in 1952 by national leaders, social workers and many eminent persons. Names like Jawaharlal Nehru, Gulzari Lal Nanda and Abul Kalam Azad could be found on its national committee.

When the plan to build embankments received the green signal, L N Mishra decided to use the bss to do this work. It was agreed upon that the embankment would be built using shramdan (voluntary labour). Bihar's chief minister Sri Krishna Sinha laid the foundation of the embankment on the Kosi river on January 14, 1955, in Nirmali, Saharsa district. According to Ramchandra Khan, inspector general of police (prosecution), Patna: "Senior politicians used this opportunity to award projects to their close relatives, one of the contractors was Shyam Mishra alias Ladoo Babu, a relative of L N