Dir- Satish Anand
Om Prakash Bharti’s Hindi play ‘Baandh Tootne Do’[‘Let the embankment be breached’] hits several targets at the same time- the tragedy of Kosi floods, the story of turning an innocent river into a cursed one, building embankments on rivers and the frequent breaches that take place in them, a thoroughly corrupt government establishment, the increasing tendency of the people to depend on government dole, and the society ‘s shirking of responsibility.
Rivers have been the nurturers of civilization and have rightly been endowed with a maternal instinct. With the process of development began the exploitation of rivers. The human community’s effort was to make rivers subservient to them. If a river served the interest of man, it was a blessing and a boon; if it fulfilled its own dharma, it was stigmatized as a curse. Flooding and changing its course are a part of a river’s dharma, an inevitable consequence of its instinctive behavior. This conflict between man and rivers turned the rivers into curses. As a result rivers emerged as a social problem. Initially man tried to deal with the problem collectively and in the process enriched the society’s knowledge relating to rivers. There was economic progress. Political awareness increased. A nation came into being. A government was established followed by the formation of a republic. The responsibility of tackling the problems relating to rivers devolved on the government machinery. Lust for power and position gave rise to a new culture of assurances. Awareness of social responsibility decreased. And society came totally to depend on government machinery. Government negligence has led to the death of thousands of people in floods and breaches in embankment. It is around these issues that the play ‘Let the Embankment Get Breeched’ revolves.
The play has a story, a river, a region, and the events that take place there happen in a village located on an embankment on Kosi River in Saharsa district .
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