Sangli is a fast-growing township on the banks of the river Krishna. In 1998, the Sangli municipality was merged with the municipality of Miraj and the Kupwad village panchayat. The Sangli, Miraj Kupwad Municipal Corporation was thus formed and has a population of 500,000. Sangli is made up of 24 wards, seven of which border the city on the banks of River Krishna. Many of these municipal wards are new colonies that have sprung up over the past few years.
The Municipal Corporation has regularized some of them but there is a large area outside the wards where the colonies have extended. These extensions are recorded as `farm houses’ and they are pucca houses and shanties built on agricultural land. These houses and shanties have also claimed many nallas in the city.
As is everywhere, the most marginalized communities have settled down in these shanties in and around Sangli city. They are skilled and unskilled labour that has come to the city to make a living. These settlers are from the drought-prone areas of Sangli district, parts of South Maharashtra and North Karnataka.
The River Krishna is the lifeline of South Maharashtra and originates at Mahabaleshwar in Satara district. It is joined by the Koyna at Karad and flows downstream into Sangli where the River Warna joins it at Haripur. The biggest dam in Maharashta is built on the river Koyna at Koynanagar. A dam has also been built at Chandoli across the River Warna. All these rivers are rain-fed and have their origins in the Sahyadri ranges.
Rain and more rain…
The rains started in the last week of July. From the 27 th of July there were reports that the waters in Koyna, Warna and Krishna were rising but no one was worried. The excitement of so much rain and water was slowly building up and everyone was happy and joyous. Everyone was preparing for a wet season. There was no indication that the water will cross the danger mark
The heavy downpour started on 28 July and the satellite areas around Sangli city were inundated with water. The rising waters slowly claimed one area after another and by the morning of 30 July, 1800 persons were evacuated and brought to three municipal schools. The corporation was busy evacuating affected persons.
Our organization, SANGRAM, has been working in Sangli and parts of Western Maharashtra and North Karnataka for over a decade and we immediately put together our network of volunteers and workers to provide good, nutritious and hot food to all the displaced persons till such time that they could go back to their houses.
But this was easier said than done. For one thing, we knew that throwing or distributing food packets would just not do. Chaos would ensue in the distribution and the strongest would elbow out the women and kids.
Instead, we contacted a marriage hall, Ganesh Mangal Karyalay, because we knew that they would have the infrastructure to cook for so many persons. We teamed up with the municipal corporation and had a meeting with the Municipal Commissioner Mr. Milind Maiskar. We also decided that we would provide the evening meal for as long as it was necessary. We were very particular that hot, nutritious food should reach them by 8 `o’ clock since there were many small children who were wet and hungry. The menu was simple - shira, masala rice and thick gravy.
VAMP, the collective of women in prostitution, quickly organized about 40 volunteers who used the municipal vehicles to distribute the food and even serve the same in each school.
Sunday, July 31
The state government announced a red alert due to incessant rains in the catchment areas of Koyna, Krishna and Warna rivers and release of water from four dams in the region.
The water to the tune of 92,787 cu secs was being released every second, causing immense damage to the low-lying areas along the banks of the river Krishna. Coupled with Chandoli dam – 35000 cu secs, Dhoom dam – 10,000 cu secs and Kaner dam – 8000 cu secs the water flow into Sangli, Karad and Kolhapur resulted in more that 231 villages being cut off in Sangli district alone. In Sangli, the water-level started rising and it soon crossed the danger mark of 45 feet. More and more areas were being evacuated and the municipal schools started filling up.
On the first day, the marriage hall where the food was being prepared was flooded with waist-deep water and the municipal commissioner had to provide trucks to cart the food for distribution. Our workers waded through waist-deep water to reach the hall. We cooked for 3750 persons on that day. The next day, we used the same trucks to shift out of the hall and chose Municipal school number 1 that is situated in the middle of town as our base. On the second day, after the distribution of food and after the last team left the school premises, we found that the water level outside this school too had risen and we had to wade out in calf-deep water.
The next morning, we found that the cook, Mahesh Kamble, was marooned in School no. 1 and we had to rescue him! The municipality was busy evacuating persons who had been in the schools from July 29. Five schools had to be evacuated and persons shifted out. We tried to talk to them to organize a vehicle to get our cook and his vessels out of School no. 1. But there seemed to be no way we could rescue the cook. After much deliberation, municipal councilor Jyoti Adathe suggested that we use the dumpers used in construction work. She contacted one Gunjati who kindly provided a dumper, but his driver refused to drive the truck through chest-deep water.
The SANGRAM driver, Appasaheb Kadam, took up the challenge and we rescued our cook and his paraphernalia. As we started the dumper on its outward journey, women and children who were stuck in the school accosted us. They were 650 persons there. Three hundred children, two hundred women and about 100 men. The administration was helpless. They just did not have the infrastructure to rescue these people.
We promised them we would come back for them and got the cook out to the Devadasi hall in Gokulnagar. We had to make four trips into the water to rescue the whole lot. There were women who refused to move without their goats and so we moved them, goats and all. The young men walked through the water after helping their women, children and the elderly on to the dumper. Once we had everyone out of the water and on higher ground, we went back to the cooking. We had to feed 5000 persons on that day.
We fell short of vessels for distribution of the food. One message through Gokulnagar, the community of women in prostitution yielded steel buckets and barrels. Everyone pitched in and the women of VAMP helped in the preparation of the food.
First roti, then kapda….
Wherever we went to serve food, people started asking for clothes. Women had walked out with a few belongings, in some cases with almost nothing but a few utensils. They needed sarees. A few friends collected some clothes but the demand was five times the collection. VAMP to the rescue again! One round and we had sarees, salwar kameez sets and a few clothes for the children. We chose the worst-affected and distributed the same on July 4.
It took a good week for the water to recede and for the people to return home. The incessant rain has hampered the cleaning up process. A musty smell is heavy in the air. The flood-affected have had to contend with snakes, the dangers of house collapse while water-borne diseases and skin infections have increased, putting a great strain on the civil hospital.
Entire villages in the district were inundated and all the standing crops are lost. Besides, the flood has claimed last year’s produce also. Government-appointed teams have visited the villages to assess the damage to crops and houses.
In all this, senior government ministers, including deputy chief Minister R R Patil, blamed the floods in Western Maharashtra on the backwaters of the Almati dam in Karnataka. The charge has been denied by the Karnataka government. The politicians are quick with their arguments for and against. But it is the poor and the farmers who have lost the most.