Flood-affected villagers use a boat to take a patient to hospital from their inundated village, in Bihar's Muzaffarpur.

About 125 people have been killed and 81 lakh affected in Bihar's 12 districts due to the floods. One trigger is the bad practice to build embankments on riverbeds, Bhushan said.

"All water in Kosi and its tributaries comes from high peaks and this fast-flowing water carries sand and silt. Naturally, once you build embankments around the riverbeds, the area around the river becomes low land and, hence, floods are inevitable."

"One of the solutions could be to reverse old practices in the agriculture sector. We need to think about the transition to less water-intensive crops in many states. We also need to understand that water must come at a price and shouldn't be a free commodity anymore," he said.

Most deaths have taken place in the districts of Sitamarhi, Sheohar, East Champaran, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Madhubani, Supaul, Araria, Kishanganj, Purnea and Katihar.

Excess water discharge from Nepal with whom the state shares its northern border has been a curse. Nepal is a mountainous region and whenever it rains heavily there, water flows into all major North Bihar rivers, including Kosi, Gandak, Kamla Balan, Bagmati and Narayani.

The flow is such that it causes mass destruction and damages embankments which only aggravates the situation. Bihar has witnessed devastating floods in 2008, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and now due to incessant rains and flooding in Nepal.

There have been several platforms like Water and Energy Commission Secretariat (WECS), Nepal-India Joint Committee on Inundation and Flood Management and Nepal-India Joint Committee on Water Resources.

However, discussions at various levels, including diplomatic, between both countries, have failed to resolve the crisis.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar maintained that it was the unusual torrential rainfall in the catchment area of Nepal that led to the flash floods in Bihar this year.

He said that usually heavy rain in Nepal leads to floods in the state only in August and September, but this time it happened a month earlier.

Actor Manoj Bajpayee, born in Bihar's West Champaran district, said a permanent solution has to be found. "If that means to sit with the Nepal authorities and sign some kind of a treaty, then so be it. People are dying every year," he said.

Actor Pankaj Tripathi, who comes from Bihar's Gopalganj district, also called for a long-term solution to tackle floods in his state. "Every year floods will happen and a relief fund will be started. A permanent solution is needed. Either we make our dams stronger or revive the network of canals. In Bihar, there are also areas which are dry."