Under the Shadow of Floods: UP Villagers Compelled to Tear Down Their Houses

Lucknow: Imagine having to dismantle a house that took you months of effort to build. What could possibly force one to pull apart the assemblage of labour, dreams, and hard-earned money? In Uttar Pradesh, the reason is the floods.

Sukkhu, a native of Ahirana village in Lakhimpur Kheri district’s Phoolbehar block, and his fellow villagers could be seen destroying their own homes as the floodwaters from the turbulent river threatened to devour the entire village.

“We don’t know when our houses might get engulfed by the swirling river water. Therefore, we are destroying the homes we built with so much effort,” Sukkhu told NewsClick.

Ahirana, a small village, is located along the banks of the Sharda River in the flood-prone area between two afflux bunds, about 15 km north of the district headquarters. With heavy rain lashing the hilly areas of Nepal, the Sharda River started swelling a week ago and most of the village land was exposed to erosion threat.

According to villagers, continuing soil erosion due to the river has damaged more than 10 houses and therefore, there is a mad scramble among them to destroy their houses as quickly as possible and save some property. The state government has continued to turn a blind eye despite repeated requests made to the official who visited the village, alleged the villagers.

“We are forced to leave the village where we grew up and migrate somewhere else. We don't know where we are going,” said Chandra Mohan, whose house was submerged in the flood.

Within a week, nearly a dozen houses and hutments, agricultural land with crops have been devastated. Earlier on Tuesday, Kheri DM Mahendra Bahadur Singh visited the village and advised the villagers to move to safe places.

Facing debt, coupled with low returns, the farmers whose crops were damaged in flood have demanded a complete waiver of their debt.

The situation in Bahraich and adjoining Balrampur is also grim where people have packed their belongings preparing to leave the house as soon as the district administration issues an alert.

“We have lost everything – crops, livestock and property. Not a single politician has come to see our sufferings, forget about helping us. We have demolished our house to save whatever material we could so that it can be used to rebuild our houses again,” Lakhan, another villager, told NewsClick.

Since both villages are situated in low-lying areas, floodwater enters every year. As most of the people in the villages work as migrant workers, at a time when the economy is down and jobs have dried up, the people here are staring at a bleak future.

The state government has issued a flood alert in several parts of the Tarai region, including Lakhimpur-Kheri, Bahraich, Gonda, and western UP districts, which include Shamli, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Aligarh, Mathura, Agra, Firozabad, and Etawah, after the release of 1.90 lakh cusecs of water from Hathini Kund barrage on the Yamuna River in Haryana.

Meanwhile, at least 16 people were killed in rain-related incidents across the state in the past 24 hours, the relief commissioner said in a statement on Friday, as heavy rain continued to batter Uttar Pradesh.

In Saharanpur and Shamli, among the worst affected areas, the River Ganga was flowing above the danger mark at Kachla Bridge in Badaun district, and the Yamuna River was also above the danger mark at Mavi in Muzaffarnagar district. Additionally, the River Sharda was flowing close to the danger mark at Paliyakala in the Lakhimpur district.

According to Ashu Kumar, a junior engineer of the irrigation department, approximately 1,90,000 cusecs of water were released into the Yamuna on Wednesday, causing it to exceed the danger mark. The river's water level reached 232.22 meters, nearly 72 cm above the danger mark, as reported by the media.

In Saharanpur, 92 villages and 16 urban localities were flooded, leading the district administration to relocate 512 people to flood shelters on Wednesday. Similarly, in Muzaffarnagar, two villages were flooded, and the administration shifted 200 people to flood shelters.

Red Alert - Shamli, Budaun

Orange Alert - Shahjahanpur, Barabanki, Hapur, Moradabad

Yellow Alert - Ayodhya, Balrampur, Bareilly, Farrukhabad, Mathura, Bahraich and Lakhimpur Kheri