Conditions in northern Bihar remain grim due to the recent floods. Photos and videos of the flooding are being widely shared across social media. A Twitter user posted an image published on the Hindi daily Hindustan. “This is a picture of Bandra’s Sakri-Chandpura area. This family has been living like this for a week in this village-turned-island,” read the tweet. Another user shared the image claiming it depicted the recent Bihar floods.
Due to flood, the family has been living like this for a week. #Bihar pic.twitter.com/ni29j1ORNU
— زماں (@Delhiite_) July 30, 2020
The image was published on the third page of the Muzaffarpur edition of Hindustan dated July 30, 2020, with the headline, “Flood threatens SKMCH.” We noticed that apart from the image caption, the family finds no mention in the article.
Fact-check
A reverse image search led to various links, including a 2015 Global Citizen article suggesting that the photo was from Bangladesh. Therefore, an image that has been on the internet since at least 2015 was published in the newspaper as the recent Bihar floods.
The image was also published in 2014 on a website called ‘Permaculturenews.org’ which wrote an article on sandbar cropping in Bangladesh. The picture is credited to Shiree (Stimulating Household Improvements Resulting in Economic Empowerment), an organisation working with Practical Action in Bangladesh.
Practical Action is an international NGO working to uplift the poor in developing countries. It has worked extensively in Bangladesh as well. Shiree is a government organisation in Bangladesh. Based on this information, we searched for the image on Shiree’s website. Its ‘Media’ section carried a Flickr link with all the images of Shiree’s work. Here, we found an album titled ‘Practical Action, Bangladesh (PAB)’ with 272 photos.
This album also contained the image in question. We found that it was taken on September 22, 2011.
Practical Action has provided financial support to poor families in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. According to its website, this was done in two phases – from April 2009 to March 2012, then between April 2015 and December 2015.
Hindustan published an image from Bangladesh that was at least nine years old as a flooded village in Bihar. Several reports state that houses in Bandra submerged due to the flooding in Bagmati and Burhi Gandak rivers. ETV Bharat reported that many families in Gopalganj’s Bagheji village were forced to take shelter on higher ground and roofs due to lack of administrative assistance.
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