New Delhi: Scattered showers have brought relief against the scorching heat but parts of the country are still reeling under the loss of human lives and livelihood due to the heat wave. In Uttar Pradesh, 51 persons died from “heat stroke” between May 28 to June 21, according to official figures. Twenty-five of them died on a single day, May 31, according to the data compiled by the UP Relief Commissioner. Most of these deaths were recorded in Sonbhadra (15), Mirzapur (14) and Mahoba (13). These are backward districts located in the Bundelkhand and Vindhya regions which generally witness high temperatures.
But the heat is not the only killer in the state. From deaths due to snake bites to fatal attacks by bulls and Nilgai, UP has a long list of notified ‘state disasters’ – some natural and others man-made – that lead to thousands of casualties every year. The vulnerable and poor live the most precarious lives.
With the hot, dry summer transitioning into humid monsoons, the state is bracing up to face the dual challenge of floods and human contact with venomous snakes. More than 30 major and minor rivers run through the diverse topography of the country’s most populated state.
A look at the government data on human casualties due to ‘state disasters’ shows that snake bites, drowning, unseasonal or excess rainfall and lightning lead to the maximum loss of human life.
In 2018, the Adityanath-led government expanded the eligibility for state compensation through the state disaster relief fund and declared snakebite as state disaster. With the updated policy, families who lost their dear ones to snake bites will be eligible to claim compensation of Rs 4 lakh from the government. While snakebites are common throughout the year, they witness a sharp rise during monsoons as the reptiles are forced to crawl out of their holes due to the flow of water.
Since 2018, 3,415 persons have died in the state after being bitten by snakes, according to the UP State Disaster Management Authority. From 2019 to 2023, years for which figures are available for the entire period, 3,348 persons died due to snakebites. That’s an average of 670 deaths annually.
The worst affected year was 2021-22, when 981 persons died due to snakebites, followed by 2023-23 (851) and 2022-21 (538). The worst-affected districts have been Sonbhadra, Fatehpur, Barabanki, Unnao, Hardoi, Sitapur, Ghazipur, Lalitpur and Mirzapur. The first five in this list have been declared ‘snakebite hotspots’ by the government. They are largely rural and agrarian districts. With the monsoons knocking on the doors, UP has already recorded 46 deaths due to snakebites this year.
Farmers, labourers, hunters, snake handlers, cattle herders and tribal people are the most vulnerable to snakebites, according to the UP government’s manual on snakebites.
In 2018, when Adityanath declared snakebites a state disaster, he was addressing the challenge of the financial crisis borne by the kin of farmers and rural people who died in such incidents, in many cases while working in fields. However, in several cases, the victim’s family has had to fight a legal battle to get the due compensation, battling procedural complexities.
In 2022, the Allahabad high court ruled that it was not mandatory to obtain the viscera report of the victim for the grant of compensation to snakebite victims. The court’s order came after a man from Etah, Om Prakash, was aggrieved that officials kept his claim for Rs 4 lakh pending after his 18-year-old daughter died due to a snakebite, on grounds that they had not received her viscera report. A postmortem of the body was sufficient to ascertain the cause of death, the court ruled then.
Ever since the BJP came to power in UP, the issue of stray cattle has taken on a political colour. Farmers and commuters have faced the brunt of bulls and cows wandering free on roads, highways and farms. Not only do these animals raid fields and devour crops, they can also cause injury or death. In several cases, people, including farmers or pedestrians, have been gored to death by stray bulls. In the 2022 UP assembly election, the main opposition Samajwadi Party had promised to provide compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the kin of each person who died due to attacks or accidents caused by bulls or cows, if was voted to power.
Caving in to public pressure, the BJP government in October 2022 declared that a sum of Rs 4 lakh would be provided to the kin of people killed in attacks by bulls and nilgai (literally meaning ‘blue cow’ but an antelope that is often viewed by farmers as a menace to their crops). In April, a young man died in Ayodhya after his motorcycle collided with an incoming nilgai while he was driving on a highway.
According to the UP Relief Commissioner, 92 persons were killed in attacks by bulls and nilgai in 2023. In 2024, so far, 15 persons have died in such incidents.
What’s noteworthy is that more people died due to attacks by bulls and nilgai in UP in 2023 and 2024 than those in human-wildlife conflict (86 in 2023 and five in 2024).
Like in the case of snakebites, several victims of bull attacks have had to knock on the doors of the courts to get their due compensation. In May, a person from Rae Bareli filed a petition in the Allahabad high court after officials rejected his claim for compensation on the flimsiest of grounds. Harikesh Kumar said his daughter was travelling on a motorcycle with her uncle when a stray bull hit her. She fell on the side of the road and died later while being taken to a hospital. When Kumar filed an application for compensation for death due to a bull attack, a committee of officials ruled him as ineligible for compensation under relevant government orders. The officials claimed that the girl did not die out of a direct hit by the stray bull. The bull hit the motorcycle on which she was a pillion rider and she died after falling off it, they argued.
While the actual number of people dying in state disasters might be much higher, the official figures calculated by the government since 2019 show that there has been a big increase in the number of human casualties. UP has 22 notified disasters, of which 11 are declared by the state government. These include boat capsize, falling into borewell, cleaning sewers, loo, storms, snakebites, bull/nilgai attacks, drowning and lightning.
The cumulative deaths due to these disasters have increased from 1,435 in 2019 to 2,642 in 2021 to 3,399 in 2023. A part of this might be attributed to the huge jump in the number of people dying due to drowning. In 2021, 935 persons drowned in UP. In 2022, that increased to 983, according to the UP Relief Commissioner’s office. However, in 2023, the number of people who drowned rose to 1,689. So far this year, 359 persons have already drowned. Many incidents of drowning while bathing in a river or canal were reported this summer.
Coming back to snakebites, the UP government’s ‘Snake Bite-Standard Operation Procedure (2024)’ lists a number of initiatives taken by it to bring down the death count. However, despite the various awareness programmes and pilot projects undertaken by the government, it admits to various “gaps in existing capacities”.
These include:
1. A lack of adequate resources for the worst-affected regions to improve community education, access to timely healthcare, training of medical staff and provision of appropriate anti-venom.
2. Inadequate availability of skilled human resources at the first point of care such as PHCs or CHCs.
3. Lack of adequate supply of anti-venom at PHCs/CHCs in rural areas.
4. Unavailability of adequate number of ambulances in remote rural areas for quick movement of victims to health centres.
5. Lack of awareness among community members on seeking urgent hospital care.
6. People resorting to local beliefs and superstitions for treating snakebite cases.