DANGEROUS CROSSINGS: The Kosi barrage is nearly dry as the river has completely bypassed it since August

What chronic strikes and shutdowns could not achieve, the Kosi disaster has managed to do.

Nine districts of eastern Nepal have been cut off from the rest of the country since August because the river has severed the East-West Highway. The Itahari-Biratnagar industrial corridor is crippled, and tourism from Darjeeling and Sikkim to Nepal has been affected.

Three months after the Kosi breached its embankment, the river is still flowing through villages in Nepal and India. Some 52,000 people in Nepal and three million in India are still displaced. Meanwhile, at the barrage, the Kosi is just a trickle.

Indian engineers have been busy building a cofferdam to plug the 2.5km breach in the embankment and divert the river through a channel to a western branch of the river.

ALL PICS: MANOJ SHRESTHA Motorcycles being ferried across a 500m stretch of washed off highway in Lauki

Last week, when Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee inspected progress on the diversion, engineers said they could complete this work by March when the flow in the river is lowest.

Most of the 13km section of the highway have now been filled over, however there is a 500m section near Laukhi where the main channel of the Kosi cuts through the highway.

The army and private operators run a ferry service in this section. They take bus passengers, motorcycles and sometimes even small cars across.

Sunsari CDO Durga Bhandari is getting impatient with the delay and doubts if the work can be completed by March. "There is a lack of sense of urgency to the work," he told Nepali Times.

An overloaded boat crosses the Kosi in Chhatara where the river breaks out of the mountains.

Indian engineers say they are waiting for the low-water level in January February to complete plugging the embankment, and in the meantime have finished digging a 9km canal across to the Kosi main channel. Only after this happens can the work to rebuild the 500m section of the highway begin.

Meanwhile, the 52,000 people displaced by the floods in Sunsari are still living in 29 shelters run by various aid agencies. It is not clear if they can go back to the land once the river is diverted since the fertile soil is covered with sand and all property boundaries have been obliterated.

"We will see who wants to go back to their homesteads and who wants to settle elsewhere," Bhandari says.

Besides tourism to the Kosi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, the biggest loss has been suffered by the industries and plantations in Morang, Jhapa, Ilam and Dhankuta. These towns have been shut off both from their markets and their supply of raw materials.

Some 500 manufacturing units employing 100,000 people in Morang have been affected, with most reducing production by 60 per cent. The power cuts are even worse in the east because the floods washed away a 132 kVA transmission pylon and power import from India has been affected. And if things weren't bad enough, shutdowns like the Limbuwan banda in eastern Nepal and highway blockades by Madhesi militant groups this week have increased the misery of travellers and further crippled business.