In Bihar’s Kosi Belt, Floods Return Every Year, But Rehabilitation Remains Out of Reach

Supaul, Bihar: “Every monsoon, we know the water will come and wash away our house and belongings. And every year we lose everything and still receive no compensation,” says Rekha Devi, 36, of Belagot village in Bihar’s Supaul district.

Devi lives with seven family members — her husband, three children and parents-in-law. “From July 14-15 until the end of September, the water kept coming and receding. There is still mud all around us,” she says.

Like Devi, for people living in Supaul, one of Bihar’s flood-prone districts, the bigger worry is not just surviving the flood, but getting help after it.

In the 2026 monsoon season till September 15, nearly 49.71 lakh people across 15 districts of Bihar were affected by floods. 

Around one lakh hectares of standing crops, including paddy, maize, banana and vegetables, were affected.

Particularly vulnerable are the Kosi basin districts of north Bihar. The Kosi is a transboundary river flowing through Tibet, Nepal and India, and flooding in the basin is shaped by more than rainfall alone.

The state has responded with relief assistance to families officially identified as flood-affected. By September 15, more than 8.27 lakh families had received Rs 579.23 crore in relief assistance, with Rs 7,000 transferred to each family through direct benefit transfer.

But access to relief can depend on whether an area is officially classified as flood-affected.

Rajesh Mandal of Belagot says his village was not declared flood-affected this year. “So, will we get compensation? We are only asking the government to give us one dhur of land. We will even live in a hut.”

According to Supaul’s Additional Collector (Disaster Management), Mohammad Tariq, Bihar’s criteria require a locality, hamlet or village to remain surrounded by river water for four to five days, with access routes cut off and normal life disrupted. He said these conditions were not fully met in the concerned areas this year.

However, there is no official data to clarify by how many days the water remained below this threshold in Belagot, Dagmar and Ghogharia.

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A recurring crisis

In Supaul district, floods and river erosion have repeatedly damaged homes, land and livelihoods.

“Every monsoon, we wait in fear for floods to come and wash away whatever we have,” says Subhash Yadav of Sisouni panchayat in Supaul district.

This is not just attributable to excessive rainfall. “Kosi is known as the sorrow of Bihar as it changes its course at any time — making it difficult for anyone to understand it,” says Varun Kumar, chief engineer at the Bihar Water Resources Department.

Explaining the recurring floods, Ashish Kumar, former director of the meteorological department, says flood risk in the Kosi basin depends on multiple factors, including rainfall in Nepal’s mountainous catchments and in Bihar, upstream discharge, silt, embankments, drainage and the Ganga’s water level.

Climate change adds another layer of uncertainty by altering rainfall patterns, says Vidyarthi Vikas, an economist and researcher at the A.N. Sinha Institute.

A confluence of these factors means that life in the Kosi almost never returns to “normal”. Floods turn even basic tasks into struggles. Toilets become inaccessible, while medical emergencies can mean travelling by boat.

There is no government data on families who lost homes or agricultural land to river erosion in 2026. But the scale of recurring losses can be gauged from a Household-Level Flood Loss Assessment by Megh Pyne Abhiyan and Tata Trusts.

Its assessment of the 2024 floods found that 27 of Bihar’s 38 districts were affected, impacting 56.38 lakh people across 36,632 villages. Nearly 97% of agricultural land in the affected areas was damaged, with crop losses estimated at Rs 306.19 crore. Damage to houses and cattle sheds amounted to another Rs 20.87 crore.

There is also a lack of transparency on rehabilitation. The Supaul district administration website does not provide figures on total beneficiaries under the Kosi Rehabilitation Scheme.

According to the administration, complete figures on affected people and rehabilitation were not yet available as relief operations were still underway this year. But figures for the previous year are not available either.

What is available is a joint study by the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies and ICIMOD. Based on a 2014-15 survey of 1,600 households across 32 villages in 11 Kosi basin districts, the study found that around 80% of households had not received rehabilitation support.

A decade later, the gap appears to persist.

Ekta Yadav, mukhiya of Ghogharia panchayat, says they have not received rehabilitation support. “Floods have been coming for years, but the situation in this area remains the same. Even basic necessities are not available. All the hand pumps get submerged and dirty water comes out,” she says, adding that they have no choice but to drink it.

She also alleges that documentation requirements make it difficult for some residents to access government schemes and that middlemen exploit this.

Mandal says that even when money is sanctioned, a portion is predetermined for middlemen. Tariq, however, says no such complaint has reached him. “If any such complaint comes to my notice, action will certainly be taken.”

Migration a survival strategy

“Because of all this, the men of the house have to go outside. If they don't, we won't even get salt and bread,” says Rekha.

Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha says migration is among Bihar’s biggest problems, driven by floods, natural disasters, small landholdings and a lack of local opportunities. A large share of those migrating from Bihar, he says, comes from the Kosi region.

The plight appears unchanged across villages in the Kosi belt.

Priyanka Ram of Khukhanaha in Ghogharia panchayat says, “We are at God's mercy. Nobody looks after poor people like us. Forget education for our children, we don't even have salt and bread. We have neither a house to live in nor work.”

“On our own land, we live like refugees,” she says.

Meanwhile, in Dagmar panchayat, Arvind Mehta says even permanent housing feels unsafe.

“We cannot build permanent houses because they could disappear into the river at any time. So, we just build temporary houses.”

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Beyond relief

Problems are evident both in relief and rehabilitation. But what is the solution?

While the Kosi crisis has been in the spotlight for decades, state responses have historically prioritised physical infrastructure over long-term human rehabilitation.

For instance, following the catastrophic 2008 Kosi floods, the Bihar government launched the World Bank-supported Kosi Flood Recovery Project. The initiative focused heavily on reconstruction, funding the construction of around 56,758 durable houses and 44,946 toilets, alongside structural repairs to around 259 kilometres of roads and 69 bridges.

However, community-level rehabilitation is often ignored.

Decades earlier, in 1987, the Chandrakishore Pathak Committee had laid out a comprehensive blueprint for the region, offering 17 targeted recommendations to permanently resettle and support displaced Kosi communities.

But when Mahendra Yadav of the Kosi Nav Nirman Manch filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Patna High Court to demand justice for flood-affected families, the Bihar government told the court that the Water Resources Department did not even possess a copy of the Pathak Committee report and was trying to locate it.

Not surprisingly, erosion, waterlogging, vulnerable settlements and migration continue to pose challenges.

The government is undertaking some anti-erosion work. In 2026, the Water Resources Department approved projects at Sujanpur, Maujaha and Lalganj. However, actual progress and expenditure could not be independently verified from available online records.

Varun Kumar says there is currently no major project under construction on the Kosi, although smaller anti-erosion works are underway.

A proposal to raise and strengthen embankments on both sides has been sent to the Centre, with blacktopping also part of the proposal. A proposal for 25 new spurs — man-made river-training structures — has also been sent to the World Bank.

For people living beside the river, however, such plans matter less than whether they can remain safely on their land.

Calling out the government’s response as inadequate, Vikas says, “The government's preparation for dealing with floods is of a low standard. If management is proper, the loss of livelihoods can be reduced.”

Vyas concurs, saying, “To deal with this problem, both preparedness before a disaster and a strategy after a disaster are necessary.”

The need for such planning could become more urgent in the coming decades.

A 2026 study on precipitation extremes in the Kosi Basin projects that between 2061 and 2100, annual precipitation could rise by around 47%, heavy-rainfall days by 60% and extremely wet days by around 79%.

These projections suggest heightened flood risk across the basin and underscore the need for a longer-term approach.

The AN Sinha Institute-ICIMOD study notes that the Kosi needs to be viewed not merely from the perspective of flood control, but as a question involving the entire river basin, water management, livelihoods and rehabilitation.

This means better embankment maintenance, India-Nepal coordination, exchange of water and weather data, local employment, livelihood diversification and monitoring of rehabilitation.

Mahendra Yadav, who has worked with Kosi residents since 2008, says the region still lacks such a concrete roadmap.

“The Kosi River is called the sorrow of Bihar, but no river is sorrow. Every river has its own life and nature. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the life and nature of the Kosi, analyse it from the past to the present, and find solutions.”

[Wc/VP]

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