The Kosi River
has ravaged the district of Saharsa for decades. Saharsa has a railway connection with
Mansi on the Sonepur-Katihar railway line of the North- Eastern Railway now, but a decade
back the railway line was permanently breached at quite a few places.Even now the
nearest railway station for Singheshwar is Madhipura about 8 miles away. The road
connecting Madhipura to Saharsa is still extremely bad and passenger buses can negotiate
it only if fair weather. On all-important roads there are quite a few culverts which have
not got bridges.
The standard of health in the area has been extremely poor till recently due to the
constant, unpredictably flood ravages of the Kosi. Kala-azar, malaria, blackwater fever,
hookworm, dysentery, skin diseases, was some of the scourges, which took a heavy toll
every year.
The Kosi currents, they say, would poison anything that would be touched. Fertile
plains yielding good crops were covered with sand by the change of current of the Kosi.
Mango orchards literally dried up after the Kosi water inundated them.