Monsoon floods affect 1.5 million people in India's Bihar state

David StrelneckAug 29th, 2008 - 03:28:36

In 2006 eight social entrepreneurs in India spent months investigating clues for solutions to the tragic devastation caused by Bihar floods. They identified through extensive field interviews that, beyond levees now triggering massively bigger deluges than smaller floods of past centuries, the causes of deep human disaster include local economics and politics which distort flood control and flood relief and often take deliberate advantage of the victims. The saddest conclusion, of course, is that for years the human devastation in Bihar has been predictable, almost reliable, months in advance of the floods each year, and not because of nature and rain, but because of economics and politics.

Their assessment reveals how flood relief is foreseen by many as a “third harvest,” with private sector and government middlemen buying, selling, and bribing rights to relief supplies months before the floods even arrive, bargaining away goods, property and even children to the sex trade in exchange for promises of flood relief or access to flood management funds. It is terrible, and it has implications for national and international media, businesses and bankers, relief agencies, citizens, and many others.

I am eager to share this draft assessment of clues for solutions, in hopes of helping anyone trying to understand and address the deepest roots of this problem. Please contact me at Ashoka, dstrelneck@Ashoka.org, for a copy of the draft notes from this work if they would be useful.

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