Liberate the Kosi: Bihar top cop Inspector Khan

Bihar Inspector General of Police Ramchandra Khan is an unusual cop. He feels passionately about the Kosi River, and decades of bad plans to constrict its flow. Inspector Khan understands the cause at hand, and is raring to get justice delivered to the people of the Kosi. Khan comes from Jamalpur Parsia, situated in the middle of the Kosi embankments. Himal's Shanuj V.C talked to the IGP at his Patna office in the Home Department's Directorate of Prosecution.

• Why are you against embankments, the taming of Kosi ?

  The very perception of taming the Kosi river shows bankruptcy of river engineering. I am questioning the application of half-baked science and half-baked development schemes. When the Kosi Project was initiated in 1955, spearheaded by major political parties, approved by the central government, endorsed by Pandit Nehru and the first president of India [Rajendra Prasad], the perception was that it would completely contain the floods. They said it would usher in a green revolution in Saharsa, Darbanga and Purnea districts, that it would create conditions for industrialisation, create a network of communication, rail and road transport systems. Now after more than 40 years, what do you have, have you succeeded in taming the river? Why has a fertile area now transformed into unfertile land? I wouldn't call the project a failure, but a devastation, disaster, catastrophe. The plan has failed, the rehabilitation has failed, the development has failed. Corruption in Bihar has its genesis in the Kosi embankments.