Every year, North Bihar floods. Every year, lakhs of farmers watch their crops drown. Every year, politicians arrive with cameras and promises. Every year, nothing permanent is done. This has been happening for 70 years. This article asks the question that should have been answered decades ago: why has no government solved this — and what will actually fix it?
North Bihar's flood tragedy follows a calendar so predictable it has become routine — and that routinisation is itself the tragedy. Because when a disaster becomes expected, it stops being treated as an emergency.
This is the most important question — and the most damning answer. Multiple governments at the state and central level have had the resources, the technical capacity and the international examples to solve Bihar's flood problem. They did not. Why?
In Bihar's patronage-based political system, floods create opportunities. Flood relief funds are distributed through political networks. Reconstruction contracts go to party-affiliated builders. The annual disaster becomes an annual patronage opportunity. A government that profits from a problem has no incentive to solve it.
Flood embankment projects in Bihar have notoriously been built with poor materials, by unqualified contractors, under inadequate supervision. The CAG has repeatedly flagged embankment projects as sites of massive corruption. Embankments that should last 50 years fail in 5. The failure creates the next contract opportunity.
Bihar's flood-affected districts — Supaul, Darbhanga, Madhubani, Samastipur, Sitamarhi — have consistently sent politicians to the Bihar assembly who fail to demand permanent solutions. Caste loyalty has repeatedly trumped constituency interest. The farmers who flood every year vote for the same parties that let them flood.
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