PATNA: At least 46 people, including 37 children, have drowned while celebrating a Hindu festival in eastern India, a local government official told AFP on Thursday. The victims drowned in separate incidents in Bihar state while ritually bathing in rivers and ponds swollen by recent floods, an official from Bihar’s disaster management department told AFP. “People ignored the dangerous water levels in rivers and ponds as they bathed to celebrate this holiday,” said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The drownings have been taking place since Tuesday in 15 districts of Bihar state as devotees mark ‘Jitiya Parv’, a Hindu festival observed by mothers for the welfare of their children. Authorities are working to recover three more bodies, the official said. The state government has announced compensation to each of the families of the victims, he said. Fatal incidents are common at places of worship during major religious festivals in India, the largest of which compel millions of devotees to make pilgrimages to holy sites. Torrential rains and flash floods hit India every year during the monsoon season. Monsoon is vital to agriculture and thus to the livelihood of millions of farmers. But it is also responsible for widespread destruction in the form of landslides and floods that kill hundreds of people every year across South Asia. More than 200 people were killed in the southern Indian state of Kerala in July when torrential monsoon downpours triggered landslides that buried tea plantations under tons of rock and soil. Experts say climate change is increasing the number of extreme weather events around the world, with damming, deforestation and development projects in India exacerbating the human toll.
