For thousands of families in Delhi’s Yamuna floodplains, the river that sustains them through the year has once again turned into a nightmare. With the Yamuna flowing at 206.22 metres at Loha Pul, entire neighbourhoods are under water, leaving people homeless and hopeless.
At Yamuna Bazar, the lanes are submerged. Children sit on their parents shoulders to cross waist-deep water. Women wash utensils in the floodwater, while some men bathe in it. A handpump, a clean water source has disappeared under the current. “There is no electricity. We don’t even know how we will drink clean water or feed our children,” a resident said, standing outside his half-drowned home.
Fear has added to the misery. Residents say snakes have entered their colony, and two baby crocodiles were spotted in the floodwater. “If my two-storey house is this flooded, I cannot imagine what others are going through,” said another man, pointing to his submerged courtyard. Families with rooftops have moved upstairs, others are surviving in government relief camps with food and medicines.
Near Loha Pul, farming families have left behind their fields and mud houses. Carrying cots, bundles of clothes and their livestock, they have set up makeshift shelters on roadsides. Women hold infants tightly as buffaloes and cows are tied next to them. “Our lives now depend on the government. We don’t have a home anymore,” said a farmer, his voice breaking. Some animals remain trapped in the water, awaiting rescue.
When the monsoon arrives, the Yamuna floods, and those low-lying areas are the first to go under water. For the poor living here, the river is a strange contradiction, it affords them to sustenance one season, and takes it the other. Regardless, year after year, they return to rebuild all that the river took.