Lost mercy of of monsoon

The lower than expected seasonal rainfall, or what is fondly called the monsoons, is casting gloom not just on the faces of those looking for a respite from the heat, but in a country where the rains are the only way to irrigate crops, agricultural output could falter and the economy could start sputtering.
Satya Bansal, CEO of Barclays Wealth, India, said, "17 per cent of India's GDP still depends on the agriculture sector and 60 per cent of agriculture remains rain dependent. A weak monsoon would mean lower agricultural output."

Apart from the economic impact, a weak monsoon could also put pressure on corporates by denting India's rural consumption story, but for now corporates find little reason to worry.

As every major report on climate change has alarmingly pointed out, the impact of global warming will be most felt by developing countries. In a final injustice of geography and imperial history, the world's developing countries are by and large also the world's warmest and most densely populated. Of all the emerging economies whose fortunes are rising, India is one of the most vulnerable to climate change.
Little wonder India is building a fence along its border with Bangladesh in anticipation of a wave of climate-change refugees. At 4,000 kilometers in length, the Indo-Bangladeshi Barrier will rival the Great Wall of China. One can only imagine what rising sea levels will do to the millions crammed onto reclaimed land in Mumbai or in India's new auto manufacturing hub of Chennai, around which one trusts the government of India has no plans to build fences.

Climate change is also already causing the glaciers of the Himalayas to melt at an alarming rate, the rivers they feed are receding. Some scientists are predicting that the sacred Ganga, whose waters have nourished the great grain-producing Gangetic plains as well as the souls of untold millions of Hindu faithful through millennia, is in danger of simply drying up. Three billion people - half the world's current population - depend on the Himalayas for water. The impact of that water dwindling away is terrifying.

If temperatures rise in India by even a couple of degrees Celsius, which they are already well on track to do, the very viability of food plants will be threatened. Yields will plummet in plants simply not evolved to thrive in higher temperatures. More immediately, climate change causes predictable weather patterns to become unpredictable. This is not good news for a country where the vast majority of agricultural production depends on the regular arrival, duration, and bounty of the monsoon rains.

Climate change is a weapon of mass destruction. Mitigating global warming by whatever means necessary should be the new Indian government's priority number one.
The government should make a major push to develop low-cost alternative energy technologies that don't require finite, toxic fuel sources (which means both fossil and fissile energy sources).

India must embrace a new path to equity and sustainability, without which democracy will merely be one casualty among many too terrible to imagine