WHY IS IT HAPPENING?

THE RAPIDLY RISING FREQUENCY OF EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS IS DEVASTATING INDIA WITH FLOODS, DROUGHTS AND CYCLONES. HOW WE CAN BUILD RESILIENCE

- By SONAL KHETARPAL

RAJINDER NEGI, AN APPLE GROWER IN KOTKHAI, HIMACHAL PRADESH, CAN ONLY SHAKE HIS HEAD IN DISBELIEF.

His crop is rotting in warehouses or stranded on broken roads. Life itself seems broken in this Himalayan state: it has seen 45 cloudbursts, 91 flash floods and 105 major landslides so far this season, leaving over 660 road blockages in their wake. For Negi and countless orchard owners, the fallout is devastating, with up to 40 per cent of their apple harvest lost this year, a staggering blow to the Rs 5,500 crore industry. This, when they have only partially recovered from the 2023 floods. "We have rebuilt before," says Negi, "but this time the damage is too deep." His words capture the collective exhaustion of a community grappling with rapidly shifting climate patterns, which are upending their land and livelihoods.

Climate chaos, in fact, is turning into an ever-present nightmare in India. Extreme weather events such as excess rainfall, unseasonal cyclones, debilitating droughts and heat waves have increased in both regularity and intensity across the land. “Every season today is characterised by an extreme weather event,” remarks K.J. Ramesh, former director general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD). This is evident in the numbers. From January to March this year, extreme weather battered India on 87 out of 90 days. The pattern was no accident: in 2024, the country suffered climate shocks on 322 out of 366 days, or 88 per cent of the year, according to the Centre for Science and Environment, which maintains a yearly tracker. This surpassed the 318 days in 2023 and 314 in 2022.

AN ENDLESS CALAMITY