The shift key: How India is learning to cope

{ FLOODLINES } THE LONG JOURNEYS HOME

- Gowri S

Between May and July 2024, India saw its most intense natural disaster in the northeast in over a decade. In the aftermath of cyclone Remal in Assam came two months of relentless downpours.

By July, about 2.5 million people had been displaced, accounting for nearly half the natural-disaster-linked displacements in India that year, according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Overall, in 2024, India also saw the highest number of natural-disaster-linked displacements in 12 years: 5.4 million.

The flooding that followed in the wake of the cyclone destroyed homes, devastated crops and damaged water and sanitation infrastructure across 19 districts, many of them along the Brahmaputra.

By all accounts — UN reports, research projections, climate scientists — the storms are set to become more intense and more frequent. India’s densely populated coasts, river deltas and vulnerable mountain regions are particularly at-risk.

While the aim, with any displaced population, is an eventual return home, this may become increasingly difficult.