Police officers in Uttar Pradesh's Ballia, displaced from their station by the flood, work from the road.
A table, a chair, two constables, and a senior police officer - sitting on the side of a road: this is how the Dubhad police station in eastern Uttar Pradesh's Ballia district, on the border with Bihar, has worked for a week now.
Ten feet down from this temporary set up, the police station building is inundated by water. To the left of entrance, the prison barrack is empty, and unlocked. It too is filled with flood water. To the right, the office in-charge's room, the ammunition depot and the file room are all also under water.
Flood waters have inundated most of the police station.
Ballia is the worst affected district in Uttar Pradesh from the current cycle of flooding on the state and adjoining Bihar. For a week now, the situation hasn't improved. "We moved out the ammunition and the files to a building nearby. But the police station needs to function from here because the people know this place. We can't make it elsewhere," smiles inspector Pradeep Kumar, the man doing the 12-hour-shift on the road today.
The prison cells are empty, unlocked and waterlogged.
The floods in Ballia are the worst in three years. About 2 lakh people, in 190 villages are affected. Further down the road from the police station, 65-year-old Adinath Chaudhary, a farmer who invested Rs 10,000 rupees on his maize crop, is standing on the road with two bundles now spoilt by the flood waters. "I have 3 bighas of land. My crop would have been harvested next month. Now its fit only to be eaten by cattle," says a dejected Mr Chaudhary.
One of the main reasons why flooding is so severe in Ballia is because it is right next to Bihar and the Ganga is very wide here, meaning a huge amount of water spilling out. The water has started to recede for now and the hope is it will drain out quickly.