Mayurakshi River - Floods and Their Control

Floods and Their Control

The Mayurakshi is famous for its strong current. For seven or eight months in the year the river is a desert – sands stretching from shore to shore for a mile and a half. But when the rains come, she is terrible, demoniac. She races along, four to five miles (8 km) wide, her deep grey water swamping everything within reach. Then comes once in a while the Harpa flood, when the water, six to seven cubits deep, rushes into villages nearby and washes away homes and granaries and all else in its way. This does not happen very often though. The last time was about twenty years ago.

Many of the rivers that originate on the Chota Nagpur Plateau and flow down into West Bengal are rain fed and have for ages wrought havoc with their seasonal floods. This includes the Mayurakshi. Annual rainfall over the basin varies between 765 and 1607 mm with an average of 1200 mm of which 80% occurs during the monsoon season from June to September.

Some of the historically important floods in this river were recorded by L.S.S. O'Malley in the Bengal District Gazetteers for the districts of Murshidabad and Birbhum. For the district of Birbhum, O'Malley has noted “in 1787 there was a high flood which it is said, in some places swept off villages, inhabitants and cattle, the crops on the ground, with everything that was moveable.” O'Malley also recorded that “in 1806 the Mayurakshi and Ajay had a sudden extraordinary rise and floods washed away whole villages.” In September 1902, because of heavy rains the Brahmani and the Mayurakshi overflowed their banks and inundated the surrounding country in some places to the depth of 12 to 20 ft (6.1 m)