Many of the displaced are yet to get any food packets or water. Most are fighting for survival with virtually nothing to eat. They are sleeping under the open sky and forced to drink the polluted flood water. Help from the sky is their elusive last hope.

Every time a helicopter or a small plane hovers into the sky, their hopes rise thinking at last they would get some food. But it turns into disappointment as the planes go by without dropping packets. It has been so for the last four days.

Reports pouring in from different flood-hit areas paint a harrowing picture of the miseries of the people. There is acute shortage of essential medicines as well as doctors in rural areas hit by floods.

About 10.8 million people, of the state's 82 million, have been affected in nearly 5,000 villages across 18 of Bihar's 38 districts in what officials say has been the worst flooding in three decades, preliminary estimates by the disaster management department say.

Nature's fury has claimed over 80 lives, destroyed hundreds of homes and simply cut off several districts.

The state government on Sunday pressed four helicopters of the Indian Air Force to air-drop relief packets in the worst-hit Madhubani and Darbhanga districts. On Saturday, two IAF helicopters were pressed into service for the first time to air drop 2,440 relief packets in Darbhanga district.

According to official sources, each 5 kg packet contains 4.5 kg of sattu (ground gram), half kg of salt, candles and match box. There has been no move to provide safe drinking water bottles to the marooned people.