Delhi: Swelling Yamuna forces people to take shelter in relief camps

NEW DELHI: The swelling Yamuna is forcing people out of their shacks and into tents erected by the civic authorities on higher ground. The rising water threatens to cover much of the floodplain by Tuesday evening. But there are many who aren’t overly anxious. “We can run away from the swelling river, not from our misfortune,” said an unperturbed Mohammad Usman, 55, lighting a cigarette near his vegetable cart under the Old Yamuna Bridge, more popularly called Loha Pul.All around Usman were other vegetable sellers, equally heedless of the flood alert.

Rahul Kumar sought to explain the seeming indifference by saying, “If we wind up our business, what will we feed our children?” The young migrant from Aligarh peddles vegetables grown on the floodplain, around 300 metres from the spot where the flood waters flowed by Monday afternoon. In the past few decades, migrants from UP and Bihar have set up small colonies of shanties by the Yamuna, and their livelihood depends on the patchwork of farms growing vegetables and flowers there.
A farmer, the plot near Usmanpur where he grew ladyfingers all awash, said, “Government officials came last night to sound a flood warning, but none has come to check the conditions since then.” East district magistrate K Mahesh agreed that floodplain dwellers often underestimated the threat of a river in spate. “Unless inundated, they do not leave their houses and many return even after being put up in relief camps,” Mahesh said. “We have deployed civil defence volunteers to ensure that people do not venture into the flooded areas. Divers too are on standby.”
The authorities were missing in action at Yamuna Bazaar where a couple of houses were swallowed up by the river as it crossed the danger mark of 205.3 metres by Monday evening. “My house was in ankle-deep water in the morning and I had to move out my wife and three toddlers,” said Vinod Kumar. The now homeless family found shelter on the edge of a temple on the riverbank. Another resident said, “We have packed our goods and will keep awake through the night, ready to shift to safer ground if the water enters our house.”
The covered cremation platform at Nigam Bodh ghat too lay underwater on Monday. “People from Uttarakhand and Bihar, who prefer cremation close to the river, were forced to shift to other areas on the premises,” said Raju, a worker at the ghat.
Floodplain residents were also evacuated in Mayur Vihar, Hathi Ghat, ISBT, Wazirabad, Kalindi Kunj and some other places. There was no sense of panic at the relief camps, inured as the bank dwellers are used to such exercises. In fact, children found the flooded farms a handy place for their paper boats and other toys.