Around 7 a.m. on Monday, when the police came to 32-year-old Prem Shankar’s shack on the Yamuna floodplains close to the Old Iron Bridge, his family knew the drill — pack their belongings, carry them on their head, walk to temporary tents set up by the government next to the bridge. They have been doing it for the last few years.
But after the police left, Mr. Shankar, a father of four, had tea and left for his field with his wife and elder daughter. When the family finally moved out at 5 p.m., there was ankle-deep water in the fields. “We plucked as much vegetables as we could and left the rest. Forty kilogram of bhindi , 40 kg of mirchi and about 20 kg of mulli ,” he said around 6.30 p.m., pointing to the vegetables spread on a white plastic, next to the bridge, a small vegetable market.
Hundreds of people, who live in the Yamuna floodplains, are being shifted to higher grounds, where the government has erected tents. People, who live here, mainly grow vegetables and rear cattle for a living. As people move out of their houses, they carry all their belongings and try to save even vegetables and plants in the fields.
At the floodplains near Geeta Colony, Reshamvati, 40, was carrying her belongings from her shack to the tent. She puts them down next to the cloth bundles carrying brinjals which she had plucked from the field before leaving.
Around 7.15 p.m., close to Mr. Shankar’s shack, which has now been flooded, Tushar Thakur, 21, a police constable and his colleague were standing guard to a group of men and women — the Yamuna water had entered the area and was inches away from the policemen’s shoes.
The group of people, who run a nursery in the area, were shifting hundreds of potted plants to higher grounds as the policemen waited. “We have been telling them since morning to move to the tent, but they want to save their plants. Now it’s getting dark and shifting the people will become difficult. We are standing here to make sure that they move to the tent soon,” Mr. Thakur said.
Kamal Singh, 32, who was shifting the plants said that he was the fourth generation of his family, who was living here. “Every year it floods here and the place where we are keeping the pots is a safe area,” he said, adding that though they managed to save almost all the potted plants, the once on the ground have been submerged by water.
Demand compensation
Shankar’s brother, Chetan Swarup, 40, said, “I used to live here and every year it is the same drama and you won’t be able to save any money, so I moved out. The government does not give us any money. They should give us compensation.”
