Bihar witnessed its worst floods in living memory in 2007, adversely impacting an estimated ten million people. I was asked to cover the floods, and a Bolero taxi drove me from Patna to Supaul in north Bihar, which was among the worst affected districts.

The entire countryside was flooded and several times during this memorable journey the Bolero was stalled in knee deep water. Fortunately, the many bridges that I crossed in this 197-kilometre long journey were all intact.

I cannot say the same today as bridges across the country seem to be falling like nine pins and that too at a time when the rainfall is not as intense as what Bihar faced in 2007.

One of the cities I crossed in this marathon journey was Khagaria. Last year, a bridge in Khagaria that connected it with the Munger district and built under the auspices of the Mukhya Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana in 2012 collapsed, adversely affecting the movement of 80,000 people.

In 2024, another major under construction bridge connecting two crucial towns in Samastipur and Patna districts collapsed. The bridge was being built by the infamous Navayug Engineering Company, under whose construction the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel caved in two years ago in the Uttarakashi district of Uttarakhand.

Bihar and Gujarat seem to be competing with each other in the number of bridge collapses. In 2024, Bihar witnessed 24 bridge collapses in a span of three months. Shockingly, the infamous Aguwani-Sultanganj bridge has........

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