The horror of Nepal’s devastating earthquake had barely receded when we saw extreme weather events in India. These have been on the rise, but never before had they been so explicitly linked to climate change by policy makers as the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi did when he linked heavy rains in Chennai to climate change in his ‘Mann kiBaat’ radio programme prior to his Paris climate summit visit.
Heavy rains lashed the capital city of Tamil Nadu, leading to severe flooding and resulting in the deaths of at least 280 people and damage worth hundreds of crores of rupees. Floods in West Bengal, Assam and Gujarat claimed lives of both humans and animals, including several lions—an endangered species only found in Gujarat in India.
But probably one of the most devastating examples of climate change affecting Indian weather was unseasonal rains between February and April that damaged the winter harvest, primarily the wheat crop, across 15 states.
