कुछ तो शर्म करो, कोशी को वोट बैंक न बनाओ

दहाये हुए देश का दर्द-66
यह जैविक सच है कि अगर आदमी जिंदा है, तो इसका मतलब है कि उसके अंदर दिल धड़क रहा है। शायद यह सिद्धांत राजनेताओं पर लागू नहीं होता। अगर लागू होता, तो त्रासदी पर भी राजनीति करते वक्त उनकी आंखें झुक जातीं। इन दिनों कोशी की त्रासदी पर बिहार में बेशर्म राजनीति हो रही है। बिहार के मुख्यमंत्री नीतीश कुमार (जिन्हें प्रगतिशील और वस्तुनिष्ठ राजनेता कहा जाता है) ने दो साल पहले गुजरात से आयी बाढ़-राहत की राशि लौटा दी है। नीतीश का कहना है कि गुजरात के मुख्यमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी के उलाहने के कारण उन्होंने यह कदम उठाया। बकौल नीतीश,"नरेंद्र मोदी के उलाहने से कोशी के लोगों के स्वाभिमान को ठेस पहुंचा है, इसलिए वे यह राशि वापस कर रहे हैं।' अगर निरपेक्ष दृष्टि से देखें, तो नीतीश के बयान का एक-एक शब्द गलत है। कोशी क्षेत्र के स्थायी नागरिक होने के नाते मैं इस बात का दावा कर सकता हूं कि मोदी के बयान से कोशी के एक भी आदमी को न तो दुख पहुंचा है और न ही उस विवादास्पद विज्ञापन की इबारत को वे उलाहना मानते हैं, जिसमें गुजरात-बिहार और बाढ़ की बात की गयी थी। जहां तक बाढ़ की मदद-राशि लौटाने की बात है, तो यह इसलिए भी गलत है कि सरकारी राशि किसी मुख्यमंत्री की निजी मिल्कियत नहीं होती। मोदी ने अपने वेतन की राशि मदद में नहीं दी थी, वह गुजरात के आम लोगों का धन था और नीतीश द्वारा वापस की गयी राशि भी बिहार की जनता की है। इसलिए प्रकांतर से नीतीश के आचरण से गुजरात के लोगों को जरूर दुख पहुंचा होगा।
लेकिन नीतीश कुमार प्रकरण की गहराई में जाना ही नहीं चाहते। यह कहना भी उचित नहीं होगा कि वे प्रकरण को समझ नहीं रहे हैं। दरअसल, मामले को वे अनावश्यक रूप से राजनीतिक रंग दे रहे हैं। राजनीतिक मुहावरे में इसे वोट बैंक की राजनीति कहते हैं। नीतीश को लगता है कि रुपये लौटाने से कोशी के लोग उनकी सारी असफलता और टूटे वादे को भूल जायेंगे और भावुकता में आकर कहेंगे कि "देखो अपने मुख्यमंत्री को हम लोगों के मान-सम्मान-स्वाभिमान कि कितनी फिक्र है कि एक उलाहने पर उन्होंने उसके पैसे उसके मुंह पर मार दिये।' लेकिन यह नीतीश की राजनीतिक-सोच का दुर्भाग्य है कि कोशी के लोग न तो ऐसा कुछ सोच रहे हैं और न ही बोल रहे हैं। उल्टे वे इसे मददगारों की तौहीन मान रहे हैं। तभी तो सहरसा के कचहरी चौक पर एक युवक कह रहा था, "अलबत्त आदमी है जी, बाढ़ के साथ भी तीन तसिया खेलना चाहता है।' इसकी वजह यह है कि कोशी के भुक्तभोगियों को मालूम है कि बाढ़ के वक्त पूरे देश के लोगों ने उनकी जो मदद की थी, उसे सदियों तक याद रखा जायेगा। क्योंकि बाढ़ के वक्त देश के कोने-कोने के सामाजिक कार्यकर्ताओं, व्यवसायियों, डॉक्टरों, स्वयंसेवकों ने जी-जान हाथ में लेकर पीड़ितों की मदद की थी। एक पत्रकार के रूप में मैं जानता हूं कि शायद ही ऐसा कोई प्रखंड होगा, जहां गुजरात के अन्न, वस्त्र, पैसे आदि नहीं पहुंचे होंगे। यह बात अलग है कि उन दिनों राज्य की प्रशासनिक मशीनरी मदद-सामग्रियों के समुचित वितरण में भी असफल रही थी।
दरअसल, नीतीश कुमार ने मोदी पर हमला कर एक लाठी से दो सांप मारने की कोशिश की है। चूंकि आगामी महीने में राज्य में चुनाव होने वाले हैं, इसलिए उन्होंने ये स्वांग रचा। नीतीश के थिंक टैंक को लगता है कि नरेंद्र मोदी की आलोचना करते ही बिहार के सारे अल्पसंख्यक वोट उनकी ओर आ जायेंगे। और पैसा लौटाते ही कोशी के लोग त्रासदी को भूलकर जद यू की ओर दौड़ पड़ेंगे। लेकिन सच यह नहीं है। वैसे यह अलग बात है कि कोशी के लोग ऐतिहासिक कारणों से कांग्रेस और राजद से दूर जा चुके हैं और आगामी चुनाव में भी उनका समर्थन जदयू-भाजपा को ही मिलने वाला है। लेकिन उन्हें कोशी को वोट बैंक बनाने की कोशिश नागवार गुजरी है।

दो प्राचीन अनुभव

पुराने सामंतों ने अपने संतानों को सिखाया था
मारने और मारकर कोलर बचा लेने के गुर
कि शिकारी को
शिकार के साथ-साथ
हथियार-चयन की भी पूरी तमीज हो
कि सांड़ को आगे
और औरत को कमर के नीचे मारना चाहिए
बहुत बाद में कुछ शातिर किसानों ने अपने संतानों को बताया
कि "पड़रू'' की मौत के बाद
भैंस की उदासी को नहीं, उसके स्तन को देखना चाहिए
कि स्तन को सूखने से बचाने के लिए
सुबह-शाम भैंस को "चोंगरना'' चाहिए

ये दोनों मानव के अद्भुत अनुभव थे
जिन्हें कालांतर में सत्ता के शिकारियों ने अपने लिए आरक्षित करवा लिया
जब-जब लोग स्थिर होने लगते
साथ-साथ खाने-पीने, उठने-बैठने लगते
अपने बारे में सोचने लगते
वे समाज की कमर के नीचे वार कर देते
और ऐन चुनाव के मौके पर उसे "चोंगरने' लगते
कभी जाति के नाम पर, कभी धर्म के नाम पर
क्योंकि प्राचीन अनुभवों ने उन्हें सिखाया था
कि "जाति और धर्म''
समाज के गुप्तांगों की तरह हैं
जिन्हें किसी न्यायालय में उघारा नहीं जा सकता
क्योंकि "जाति'', न्याय से ज्यादा जरूरी चीज है !
बिल्कुल औरतों की इज्जत की तरह !

(शब्दार्थः पड़रू- भैंस का नवजात बच्चा। चोंगरना- भैंस की योनि में हाथ डालकर दूध दूहने की एक देसी विधि)
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ज्वालामुखी के बाद

Configuration of Planet Earth is Vast-vibrant-volatile and complex . Although continuous research have unfolded many mysteries of earh and earth-phenomena viz Volcano eruption, Earthquake etc, but so many Geo-events are still unknown for us. This challenge is not limited to inner circle of earth (Geology). Outer circles and topography of Earth are also volatile and we are unable to understand them. Changing Course of Kosi is a burning example of topographical volatility of Earth.

Eruption of Volcano in Iceland has given Scientist ample opportunity to unfold some of the mysteries of inner earth, that is why more than 100 Scientists are in Iceland,these days. They are collecting data from ash and magma and analysing them. Here is an article from famous Sc. Magazine "Nature". Ranjit

The Icelandic eruption has given researchers the opportunity of a lifetime. Katharine Sanderson talks to scientists working around the clock to study the volcano and its effects.On the evening of 14 April, Gelsomina Pappalardo sent a rushed message to her colleagues across Europe, asking them to switch on their lasers and point them skywards. The volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland had just erupted, and an unusual wind pattern was sending the ash cloud into Europe's crowded airspace. Pappalardo, who works at the Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis outside Potenza, Italy, wanted to use the network of laser-based instruments, known as lidars, to measure the ash as it spread over the continent. It would be a chance for the lidar collaboration to shine.

Pappalardo, who coordinates the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET), wasn't the only scientist on high alert. As Eyjafjallajökull sullied the skies, dozens of researchers across Europe started scrambling to gather data. Atmospheric modellers, remote-sensing researchers, air-sampling experts, geologists and volcanologists are all taking advantage of this rare opportunity to measure a volcano in their own backyard.

Researchers in Iceland are probing the volcano's plumbing beneath the surface, whereas scientists farther afield are trying to assess the evolution of the ash cloud. All are hoping to fulfil their own scientific curiosity about a rare and dramatic phenomenon, but they must first answer to national governments and civil-aviation authorities, who are demanding data on the eruption as soon as possible to forecast potential problems. That means putting aside normal practices. Working virtually non-stop since the eruption, researchers are quickly gathering data and releasing them, instead of keeping the information to themselves until it is ready for publication.

"It's hard work for us," says Pappalardo, who has relied on the goodwill of her team to put in the extra hours for free to address government requests. "Since the 15th of April, I've been sleeping two or three hours a night, maximum."

Pappalardo is faced with a problem: her data are highly valued by aviation authorities and atmospheric modellers, who want them instantly. But the measurements are not useful until they are analysed, and that takes time. The data are normally used in long-term studies of clouds, Saharan dust and other atmospheric components that affect the climate.

"This is not a simple technique," she says. Pappalardo wants to ensure that the information she gives to others is accurate, so that forecasts made with those data are correct. So she stays up late, collating and analysing data from the 26 lidar stations across Europe, and then making the results available to aviation authorities. In the future, she says she would like governments to support the infrastructure for real-time monitoring and automated analysis. Faster access to such data would help atmospheric modellers improve their projections of ash concentrations at various altitudes. Aviation officials need that information when deciding whether to close airspaces (see Nature 464, 1253; 2010).

An eye on Eyjafjallajökull

Icelandic scientists are at the centre of the action and have been the busiest of all. For them, Eyjafjallajökull is more than just a recent air-traffic nuisance. "I've been keeping a close watch on this volcano for 18 years," says Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a volcanologist from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, who is interested in how Earth's crust deforms during seismic events.

The volcano has been seismically jumpy for the entire time that Sigmundsson has studied it. But the earthquake activity intensified in December 2009, and came to a head with a lava-spewing eruption on the volcano's flank on 20 March. The spike in seismic unrest led authorities to evacuate people from the volcano's immediate vicinity before its summit started shooting ash on 14 April.

This eruption seems to be similar to the volcano's previous one in 1821, which pulsed on and off for more than a year. Although the nineteenth-century pattern might indicate that the present eruption will be prolonged, the magmatic plumbing under Eyjafjallajökull is complicated says Sigmundsson, making predictions difficult. "There is no way of knowing how long this will last," he says. “There is no way of knowing how long this will last.”

Sigmundsson and his colleagues want to trace the magma conduits that feed the volcano. To do this, they track ground movement using Global Positioning System receivers around Iceland and satellite-borne radar interferometers, while seismic recordings provide information about underground structures. Such data are useful for the Icelandic Meteorological Office and the government, which must assess whether the volcanic activity is likely to increase.

Magnús Tumi Gudmundsson, head of the faculty of Earth sciences at the University of Iceland, is watching the eruption itself using a variety of means, including radar instruments that can see through the ash cloud into the crater. His research group is studying the composition and amount of ash and rock discharged from the volcano, as well as water generated from the melting of glacial ice on top of Eyjafjallajökull. These data can help to predict whether the volcano will produce ash or lava, as well as whether floods are likely.

Fire and water

The meltwater produced by the initial stages of the eruption had far-reaching consequences. Researchers suspect that the interaction between water and magma produced exceptionally fine-grained ash. Between 50% and 70% of the ash grains were less than 100 micrometres in diameter, and some were smaller than 10 micrometres, says Gudmundsson. Such minute particles stay airborne longer than heavy particles, and they can get into jet engines and then melt, causing damage. Because the eruption quickly melted all ice near the summit, the ash grew coarser after the first four days.

As they gather their data, Gudmundsson and his colleagues upload much of it to the university's website and send it to the Icelandic Meteorological Office. Gudmundsson says that 20 people from his institute are working "flat out" to monitor the volcano — putting aside regular research projects to do so. Eventually, Gudmundsson hopes to make geological sense of the data, and use them to investigate the magma chambers beneath the volcano and what controls the changes in magma behaviour, particularly when it interacts with water. At the moment all ideas are "highly speculative", he says. "I haven't had a chance to get a handle on changes that are happening."

While Pappalardo, Sigmundsson and Gudmunsson's teams rushed to measure the eruption, Urs Baltensperger just had to bide his time. Baltensperger runs an atmospheric chemistry lab at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland, which has instruments atop Jungfraujoch, a 3,500-metre-high Swiss mountain. Once Baltensperger realized that the ash cloud was on its way, he knew that this was a data-collection opportunity too good to miss. "We just had nothing to do but sit back, relax and wait for the plume to arrive," he says.

Baltensperger's team, and his colleagues at Empa, the Swiss federal laboratories for materials science and technology, used filters and other instruments to determine the ash's mass concentration — the mass per volume of air. His group also measured how much light the ash cloud was blocking. From those two values, the researchers could calculate a parameter needed to turn lidar information into measures of how much ash is in the sky, of what type, and at what altitude. Such data complement the information provided to aviation authorities by Pappalardo's lidar network.

Baltensperger was happy to pass his results on to the Swiss aviation authority. But, like Pappalardo, he says that to monitor future eruptions properly, real-time analysis and an automated data-transmission system are required.

Nature Methods

The eruption and the crisis it created in Europe are uniting researchers in unusual ways. Thor Thordarsson, a volcanologist from the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was in Iceland when the eruption began, says that because the ash blew over northern Europe, with its dense research network, it presents a unique opportunity to reconstruct the entire eruption and work out what happened within the volcano. But, as he told a group of UK-based scientists in Oxford at the end of April, "It can only work if everyone works together."

Sigmundsson has taken a strategic approach to the release of data. His group posts updates on the seismicity, meltwater and the nature of the plume, such as its height, colour and heading. But it doesn't put up raw information. "We are expecting other scientists to allow us time to fully analyse those data for scientific publications," he says.

Pappalardo says she hopes that her team's efforts to get lidar data out to the people who need them will bring something in return. The EARLINET lidar network has been running for a decade, at times on a completely voluntary basis. In a brief break from her work, she says the eruption might help to secure long-term funding for the network. "Now everybody wants to have these data."

तैरती-बहती बस्ती

Whenever Babuji Sah walks towards his village, Birbar, he says he feels like an ageing camel struggling to find his new address in the sand-filled desert. That is because Birbar is forced to move location every three to four years. The pathways and byways of the village are constantly eroded by the fast-flowing river. Mr Sah is not alone in his predicament. As the Kosi's embankment is eroded, the river deposits silt and sand on more than 380 villages located between the embankments forcing the villagers to set up camp elsewhere. The villages affected by this phenomenon are known locally as "floating villages" - because they are constantly on the move.

Constantly moving

Rajendra Jha, who works for the welfare of the people living in these "floating villages" through his organisation, Barh Mukti Abhiyan, says "the only constant in the lives of these villagers is the name of their village". "The villagers hold on to their identity by retaining the name of their village," he says. Mr Sah's Birbar village has changed its location three times and is gearing up for its fourth move as the monsoon approaches. It is a worrying prospect for Mr Sah and many of his neighbours like Jiya Lal Yadav, Lucho Sharma, Shyam Sharma and Anandi Thakur. "Again, we have to move to another place with a new address," says Anandi Thakur. Like Birbar, the residents of neighbouring Sirbar, Charnia, Bishanpur and Dahnuj villages are also looking for vacant spots in the landscape to migrate to when the Kosi river devours their present location. "We have no option. We're trapped between embankments. Our agricultural land is located here," Mr Thakur says pointing towards his land covered by silt brought in by the turbulent Kosi. The shifting sands have reduced the villagers to paupers while their environment, culture, social fabric, flora and fauna have all been dramatically affected.

Wasteland

"Villagers who live outside the embankment refuse to marry their daughters to boys living in these floating villages," says Dinesh Kumar Mishra, Kosi expert and convener of Barh Mukti Abhiyan. In many places the farmland is covered in sand and has turned into wasteland which has been taken over by bandits and criminals, he says. Bihar has around 3,440km (2,137 miles) of river embankments, nearly all in the north of the state. According to an assessment done in 1994, the flood-prone area in the state increased to nearly 7 million hectares from 2.5 million hectares in 1952. "Embankments provide partial protection to people by preventing the river from overflowing its banks during times of floods, but they also prevent the flood water from going back into the river and this leads to a major problem," Mr Mishra explains. In August 2008, the Kosi breached its embankment at Kusaha in Nepal causing a catastrophe in northern Bihar with huge loss of human life and property. Ever since 1963 when the Kosi barrage was constructed at Bhimnagar (in Nepal), river water has inundated Bihar's northern villages 37 times. And for villages sandwiched between embankments, every monsoon is a time of dread. "Nothing grows on waterlogged and eroded land covered in sand and silt," complains Shyam Sharma of Birbar.

The villagers say they continue to pay government taxes - 22 rupees per acre each year - for their submerged land because "we have no idea when the Kosi will change its course and if we will be able to reclaim our land".

'Illegal'

"My father protected the submerged land for me and now I'm protecting it for my sons and grandsons," Mr Sharma says। In government records, however, these villages on the move are "illegal" and not entitled to any compensation. In 1956 when the Kosi embankment was being constructed, the government offered a relocation package which included land for a house outside the embankment, but no agricultural land. "For villagers it was tough to live outside the embankment and take their cattle for agriculture inside the embankment. So they decided to live inside the embankment and bear the brunt," Mr Mishra says. Local government official Parmanand Sah admits that there is no provision for compensating the villagers for their displacement. "Every year villages inside the embankment submerge and they [the villagers] move to a new location," he says. But district officials also say that land revenue is collected from the villagers for farmland. "Government rules allow only irrigation inside the embankment and the human population is not allowed," an official said. For those living in these floating villages, life is tough - there is no hospital, no school, no government ration shop, no police station and no post office. The only way to reach them is by boat. Little wonder that migrations from these villages are as frequent as the Kosi flood. The young men generally migrate to work as agricultural and construction labourers, whereas children find work in the carpet industry in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state. "Only the elderly and women remain in these villages to float with life and the turbulent Kosi waters," says a villager.

(Courtesy-BBC)