25 million displaced in South Asia

RAJKHAND KATONJHA, BIHAR: Hundreds of people fearfully chant a Hindu prayer to the dead as they cower on rooftops in this submerged village, one of thousands hit by the worst monsoon rains in decades.

“Ram Nam Satya Hai (God’s name is the truth),” repeat the hundreds of people crowded atop 30 brick-and-mortar buildings still standing in Rajkhand Katonja, one of more than 4,000 villages hit by floods in Bihar.

“We’re offering the prayer of the dead as we don’t know what will happen to us,” villager Sudhir Prasad said after the rain-swollen Bagmati River wiped out their mud-thatched homes.

Nearly 25 million people have been displaced by flooding and 1,400 killed in South Asia in the worst monsoon rains to lash the region in decades. The monsoon, which lasts from June to September, regularly brings flooding to the subcontinent, but this year the region has suffered some of the worst in living memory.

Northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal are the worst affected, with many people falling victim to water-borne diseases.Bihar, India’s second most populous state with 120 million people, is one of the hardest hit, with some 10.3 million people cut off by flood waters for more than 10 days. Some 69,000 homes have been submerged.Rajkhand Katonjha flooded after torrential rains coupled with a massive outpouring from rain-hit Nepal caused the Bagmati River to burst its banks. Water engulfed the village huts, forcing some 200 families onto the roofs, where young children lay listlessly in their own diarrhoea with no medical help.

“For generations, Bagmati had been our saviour and now it has turned into a killer,” screamed Ganomotia Devi, as she fed shreds of clothing to a calf hauled onto to a rooftop. Dairy production is one of the area’s mainstays. “We don’t know what has happened to our cattle,” wept the 40-year-old. “It’s better we die quickly.”