Rainfall and other forms of Precipitation

Since last week, people of Birjain village have been protesting against erosion by the river bank. They are demanding that the government should put in efforts to prevent river erosion and save their houses, otherwise they will continue with their Satyagrah and perform Jal Samadhi (suicide by drowning). Sattore, a flood-prone Panchayat has about 3000 houses. According to the locals, erosion was not present in the panchayat till 2019, when it was first reported. The problem intensified this year.

Kashmir’s glaciers are melting at frightening rates. Kolahoi glacier, the largest glacier in Kashmir Himalayas, has lost 23 percent area since 1962 and has fragmented into smaller parts!

Glaciers, frozen rivers of ice

“We went through a lot of trouble over the month. By God’s grace, we are still surviving."

While describing his plight, the pain in the 43-year-old Prakash Mukhiya's voice is palpable. He was trapped in his thatched hut for more than a month in floods. Now that the water has receded, he is able to cook food in his house.

A civic body frees a river instead of concretising it, for the first time

India’s Himalayan rivers have been a cradle of civilisational development and a centre for faith and culture for ages. Ganga being a fertile basin has been a significant contributor to our agricultural economy as well as our river-based agrarian development. It cannot be visualised simply as a single river flowing through the northern states, but as a complex system of tributaries, main river and geological balances in alluvial geography.

For about last three weeks, Dhananjay Kumar along with his wife and children have been living on the embankment under their plastic shed following the late night July floods that submerged their house.

Monsoon 2020: Countrywide deficit of 10 percent in July; September may have heavy rains

The Amphan cyclone has disfigured the lives of people living in the Sundarbans. Houses have been torn apart, farms have been filled with brackish water making the land unsuitable for farming and betel leaves have been destroyed. People in the Sundarbans are in a life-threatening situation with makeshift shacks to live in and no means to earn a living.

"All of a sudden, water entered the house at night. Goods and cattle were submerged. There is no place to eat or drink. We have been in trouble for three days, but no one has come to help us.” The elderly Gauri Singh complains, with mixed feelings of anger, pain and helplessness. 

Gauri Singh lives in Satjoda village of Satjoda panchayat of Panapur block in Chhapra district. He is about 80 years old, but he has not seen so much water in his village since he last remembers. 

Flood waters inundated the house of Ramchandra Yadav, a resident of Khoknaha village of Supaul, for three days. During these days he cooked food by setting up a brigade on the outpost and spent nights at the same post.

"The water level of the Kosi river was continuously rising, but there was no way to get out, so we decided to stay at home and made arrangements for cooking on the chowkis", Ramachandra informed.