Fury Of Fettered Rivers

God made the country, and man made the town, says English poet William Cowper in his famous poem ‘God Made the Country.’ Underlying meaning of this poetic line is that villages evolved naturally and are endowed with all nature’s gifts -- greenery, clean environment, fresh water, tranquillity and so forth. Joy, wonders and impeccability experienced in the midst of hamlets are not available in the cities. Villages are resilient and are generally unaffected by floods, landslides and other disasters. Though Cowper's poem expresses nostalgia for serene rustic life, today it sounds prophetic in the sense that man-made structures are prone to natural calamities. The grand verse exposes vices of cities arising from the reckless urbanisation drive. Encroachment and haphazard concretisation along the rivers have caused overflow and inundation risks for the city dwellers. 

On July 23, a boy was swept away by a flash flood in a local stream at Samakhusi and his body was found in Bagmati River in Dakshinkali Municipality-7 after 11 days. The boy could not be rescued or found in time because the overflowed rivulet was covered by slabs. Following this tragic incident, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) dismantled and removed the slabs in Samakhusi and then in Kapan where flood waters ran through roads which were reportedly built over the encroached rivulet. Metropolitan cops and the local residents clashed during the dismantling of the slab covers. These incidents expose the thoughtless urbanisation process that the country has been following since early 1990s. The pell-mell development drive has brought crisis to the major rivers of the Kathmandu Valley, including the Bagmati, Bishnumati, Manohara, Hanumante and Dhobi Khola.

These ancient rivers had once played an important role in developing civilisation and bringing agricultural prosperity in the Valley in distant past. But today they have been continuously infringed upon by undermining the law of nature and law of land. The attempts to disrupt the natural course of rivers often backfire during the rainy season. We are now in the midst of rainy season and the Valley roads, parks and settlements have been repeatedly submerged, causing loss of life and property. A news report published in this daily reveals how haphazard urbanisation and river incursion have unleashed deluge in the valley annually. Recently Shankha Park and Shankhamul Ghat along the Bagmati River at Teku were under water. Similarly, roads, schools and homes at Gaurighat, Guheshwori, Kapan, Samakhusi, Anamnagar and other areas were also inundated. The illegal plotting of the lands of Manohara and Bagmati has been attributed to the floods in Kageshwori Manohara and Gokarneshwor municipalities.

A government survey in 1964 facilitated the registration of areas of Manohara River in the private names, resulting in the imprudent construction of houses along the riverside. The excessive digging of the river for commercial sand extraction led to the destabilisation of the concrete bridge connecting Pepsicola and Bhaktapur. It was the same factor behind the collapse of the Bagmati Bridge at Thapathali in 1991. Excessive sand mining has also degraded the Bagmati and Bishnumati rivers, due to more and more concretisation of the city areas. The Bishnumati River Corridor built without proper planning also halted the river’s smooth course. This is why it is always flooded during heavy rains. It is time to save the pristine rivers, control unscientific urban sprawl, create greenery, leave open spaces to allow rain water recharge the ground water level to save the Valley environment from further degradation.