With East-West Highway in full swing again, Katan livelihoods go

KATHMANDU, Feb 21: One man’s meat is another’s poison. News reports nearly two weeks ago that all flood-destroyed portions of the East-West Highway between Bhantabari and Laukahi were operational again through a temporary diversion was welcomed by most people. But to a small group it wasn´t good news at all. [break]



It meant that vehicles could now travel directly to their destinations. Passengers would not have to change buses to skip over the damaged highway portions. It also meant some people had just lost what had been their livelihood for months.






The Koshi flood swept away scores of villages in Nepal and India. It also created a new name for what used to be part of Sripur VDC in Sunsari district. The place right next to a part of the Koshi dam is now known as Katan, which means to cut or sweep away.



Until just two weeks ago, this used to bustle with human traffic. Long distance buses could not go beyond this point where the highway had been swept away by the flood in August. So they made arrangements for the passengers to cross over, or be ‘mailed’ as they used to say, to other buses of the same or some other transport company where the road continued again, for their onward journey.






Katan had become an example of human entrepreneurship, with small makeshift huts springing up everywhere to sell hungry and tired passengers everything from cigarettes, instant noodles and water to alcohol and solid food. Most of them said they were people displaced by the Koshi. But now Katan is deserted. Only a couple of huts remain on either side of the gap in the highway.



Related News:

• Vehicles run along the Koshi-ravaged highway


• Koshi back in old course


• Koshi sand to soak up Rs 120m

“Most of them (shop owners) were not actually displaced like us. They were from Inaruwa, Jhumka and other places not hit by the flood. Now that there is no more any business, they’ve gone back, but we remain,” said Hari Narayan Sah, who set up a shop at Katan along with his wife Lalu Devi.



The Sahs used to earn around Rs 800 a day before the road section was repaired. They and their children live in one of the nearby camps set up for the Koshi-displaced and the couple also man the shop at Katan. “Now our only customers are a few passers-by, some acquaintances and police and road department personnel deployed around here,” he said.






To add to their sense of despair, they’ve been told that there would be no more relief for them. “The people who distribute food gave us only 15 days’ supply this time and said that was it. They would no longer be giving us supplies,” Lalu Devi lamented. “When we asked what we should do now, they said ‘Go ask your government’. I don’t know what is going to happen to us.”



The plight is the same for everyone who has remained behind. Dev Narayan Mahato, 60, of Sripur-6 used to farm his 1.5 bigha (1 hectare). “Now the land is covered with four or five feet of sand. So it doesn’t matter if I have 1.5 bigha or five bigha or even 10. What can I do there?”



Mahato, who has a family of 11 including children and grandchildren living at the camp, also used to work other people’s land to eke out a living. He says he will keep his shop open and stay on at Katan as long as it takes. “Fifty days, a 100 or 200, who knows how long I will be here,” he said.






Abdur Rakib, 16, also of Sripur, recalls the night of the flood. “The CDO’s people came to our village that night and told us to come with them as the Koshi was about to breach its embankment. Later we heard the sound as it crushed our village and filled it with water,” he said. “Now everywhere you look there is sand, We used to grow paddy, wheat, maize and millet in the one bigha we had. Everywhere you look, there is now only sand.”



Before the Koshi was diverted back to its previous course in late January, Rakib had found a new calling, ferrying people across the flooded area by boat. “I learned to row a boat after the flood and three or four of us used to take 50 to 60 people across at a time, doing around three round trips,” he said adding that at Rs 50 per person, he used to earn Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 a day. “If there were motorcycles to take across, we charged at least Rs 100 each.”



Now Rakib rows his boat around a small pond at Katan, carrying his younger local playmates. If someone wants a boat ride he charges Rs 10. But hardly anyone does.






After the water subsided, the authorities built a rickety bamboo bridge over which people crossed an expanse of sand. Scores of middle-aged men used to wait with their rickshaws on both sides of Katan and carry passengers’ luggage to the other side for Rs 140 a trip. Now none of them are around. “The older ones from our village used to pull the rickshaws. There are no longer any passengers. So they [rickshaw people] are all gone,” Rakib told myrepublica.com. They’re all back at the camps waiting for someone to remove the sand and hoping for the day they can reclaim their land and get back their livelihood.



How Katan has ceased to be of any consequence can be deduced from what a micro-bus conductor told this scribe at Laukahi. Asked which micro-bus was headed for Katan he said, “Katan? The roads are repaired. There is no more Katan.”



For people whose lands and livelihoods aren’t buried deep under the sand in what used to be a vast expanse of fertile farmland, Katan has indeed ceased to exist.



tapas@myrepublica.com