Floods a calamity: Indian PM

SAHARSA (AFP) - Massive flooding in eastern India has caused a “national calamity”, the Indian prime minister said Thursday after touring the devastated region where more than a million people remain trapped.

Manmohan Singh announced a relief package of $228m and 125,000 tonnes of grain for those affected when a monsoon-swollen river changed course, flooding huge swathes of the country’s impoverished Bihar state.

“If there is a need for more, we will give more,” he told reporters. “We would like to assure the people of Bihar that all India will support them through this difficulty.”

The Kosi River breached its banks ten days ago on the border with Nepal, flowing through a channel it had previously abandoned.

Brahmdeo Yadav’s village in badly-hit Saharsa district was reduced to an island surrounded by murky water.

“We have nothing to cook with so we are soaking grain into this filth and trying to survive,” Yadav, a farmer, told an AFP correspondent.