Flood victims battle for food as waters recede in South Asia

INDIA: Starving flood victims battled each other for scarce food supplies even as the Indian air force stepped up relief efforts, dropping supplies for 2 million people cut off by some of the worst flooding in 30 years.

More than 360 people have died in recent flooding in India and Bangladesh in annual monsoon rains, including at least 15 people killed when their boat sank Monday in northern India’s Bihar state. Another 30 were still missing, said Manoj Shrivastav, the state disaster management secretary,

As the flood waters began to recede, aid workers were scrambling to get food, water and medicine to the millions marooned, hoping to avert an outbreak of diarrhea and other waterborne diseases.

Helicopters dropped more than 4,300 food packets Monday to desperate residents in Bihar, the worst-hit state in India, Shrivastav said.

But authorities have been criticized for being too slow to respond to the crisis with too little aid.

Starving residents were fighting each other over food packets, and a teenager fell to his death after trying to grab an aid packet dropped by a helicopter, officials said.

Hundreds of angry villagers in the Darbhanga district of Bihar briefly kidnapped a senior official and the local police chief over the weekend, only releasing them after receiving promises that an aid distribution center would be set up there, said Upendera Sharma, a local government official.

Others complained that little was being done to help them as they tried to return to their ruined homes. “I need money to rebuild my home,” said Kedar Nisar, who makes a meager salary ferrying people across the river in his row boat.

Nisar said he had received only 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of rice from the government in the past week for his family.

Shrivastav said the monsoon rains were the heaviest to hit the state in 30 years with 880 millimeters (34.5 inches) of rain in 15 days, surpassing the previous record of more than 600 millimeters (23.6 inches).

Since the start of the monsoon in June, the government says more than 1,200 people have died in India alone, with scores of others killed in Bangladesh and neighboring Nepal, where floods have hit low-lying southern parts of the country.

So far this year, some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced by flooding, according to government figures.

New Delhi, Tuesday, AP