Anshu Gupta

Children sit in lines to eat the food that they’ve received as part of the relief work after the 2008 floods in Bihar.

One of the man-made Kosi embankments failed on the 18th of August 2008 and resulted in devastating floods in the state of Bihar. It affected over 2.3 million people in the northern part of Bihar. Recurrent flooding on the lower Kosi earned Kosi the epithet "The Sorrow of Bihar". The flood killed 250 people and forced nearly 3 million people from their homes in Bihar. It triggered one of the largest evacuation operations with over 1 million people evacuated, and about 460,000 people accommodated in 360 relief camps*.

We build way too many efficient systems with a hope that they might help to improve relief work when the next disaster hits. Somehow every disaster manages to bring forth newer challenges and topple every system set in place to work efficiently. The intensity of the disaster gets blamed for the mismanagement that follows and the search for a better and more efficient way continues.

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