New Delhi, Sept. 26 -- Pintoo Kumar was scrolling on Facebook when a terrifying visual appeared on his screen. A massive wall of muddy, brown roaring water was eating everything in its way-homes, people, roads, and bridges. He recognised it immediately; the hills, the towns, the JCBs, and especially the men in orange jackets and yellow helmets, running for their lives.

He was watching it in Anjni village in Bihar's Saran district, almost 370km away from Nepal's Rasuwa, one of the districts hit hardest by the catastrophic Nepal floods on 26 August.

Just a fortnight ago, he was at the same spot in Rasuwa, wearing the same orange jacket and yellow helmet. He was one among the hundreds of workers contracted to Andritz, an Austrian technolog...