India’s monsoon season grows increasingly unpredictable and devastating • FRANCE 24 English

India’s monsoon season grows increasingly unpredictable and devastating • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] Torrential rains a city brought to a standstill. Each year monsoons disrupt the lives of 20 million residents of Mumbai, India’s financial capital. Among them is Kishor Kashi, a tuk tuk driver who dreads the season. There have been a lot of losses recently. The roads are flooded, passengers don’t travel much, and the tuk tuk breaks down. Then we lose money in repairs. This monsoon issue comes back every year. During the season, I earned 2 to 4,000 rupees less. This year, the monsoon season arrived 2 weeks early in Mumbai, the earliest onset since 1918. Images of the city underwater make headlines on TV news channels every year. The most vulnerable are the first to suffer. In this northern Mumbai slum, streets flood several times a week. Jitend Takur grew up here. To protect himself from the rising water, he relies on makeshift solutions. Every year, as soon as the rain starts, we put mud here. As you can see now, that way the water doesn’t come in. It just stays there. Mumbai, once an archipelago, bismerged into a single city during British colonial rule. Today, rapid and unchecked urbanization is destroying mangroves, natural barriers that once protected the city. For urban planning professor Rohit Majunar, monsoons have become destructive due to a lack of policies addressing climate change. A large part of Mumbai has been built on wet areas. So when the monsoon falls, when rain falls, u water just gets accumulated in those low-lying areas which were filled up or reclaimed. With climate change, what has happened is that the rainfall that we used to get over a period of 120 days, now we receive it in 30 to 33 days. Monsoons are not only affecting poorly planned cities, they’re becoming more unpredictable, threatening agriculture, India’s largest sector and the livelihood of 45% of its population. Once a blessing and essential for crops, the rainy season has now become a burden to farmers like Gokul Singh Gulab. With no irrigation systems, small-cale farmers like him depend entirely on rain. This year, early rainfall flooded his onion fields. Because of the rain, everything was destroyed. I had planted onions on 11 acres and the entire crop was lost. Because of that loss, I can’t pay my children’s school fees. I have no money left to start the next planting season. Repeated droughts have weakened these farmlands and climate instability is now accelerating the spread of crop diseases. There’s no rhythm to the rain anymore. It’s been raining since May. The soil is too wet. The moisture levels are really high. There’s mold that appears when the soil doesn’t have time to dry. It rained non-stop during that time, so the ground stayed soaked. According to a United Nations report, excessive rains caused 7.5 billion euros worth of damage to India in 2024. 3 million hectares of farmland the size of Belgium were hit. The Council on Energy, Environment, and Water, a climate think tank is tracking these changes closely. Program director Shalu Agarval says extreme weather now threatens the entire country. Over the past decade, almost more than half of India has experienced rise in intensity and frequency of rainfall. We will need to think of a lot more solutions around better planning, better communication to the farmers. Uh you know upgrading our insurance around crop system and many other things to improve our ability to withstand such shocks going forward. In 2024 alone, extreme climate events like the monsoons have forced 5 million Indians to flee their homes. Experts warn that the figure could reach 300 million by 2030.

India has witnessed its wettest May in 125 years, with torrential rains arriving well ahead of the usual monsoon season. Typically expected in early June, the monsoon arrived early this year, flooding cities across the country. Driven by a temperature contrast between the Indian Ocean and the Asian subcontinent, the seasonal rains account for nearly 70 percent of India’s annual rainfall. But they also bring recurring floods, landslides and widespread disruption, particularly in urban areas. Now, climate change is intensifying the monsoon’s impact, pushing India’s already fragile infrastructure beyond its capacity. FRANCE 24’s Théo Prouvost and Lisa Gamonet report.
#India #Monsoon #ClimateChange

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