Weather just isnt what it used to be. Calcutta winters arent as sharp; Kashmirs snowfall not as regular; Delhis monsoon not as much of a relief as it once was. Some of all that is true; there are hard numbers for confirmation. And heres something else that is true: we care less about the weather. And: we might well be responsible,and not because of greenhouse gases,either.
Delhi,for example,is supposed to be semi-desert,with dry scrub as the survey of India maps used to put it as vegetation,and life clustered around the life-giving river. Drive through Delhi today. Or take a lift to the top floor of one of the few buildings that pierce the city centres canopy of trees one of the hotels,perhaps and look around. You dont see semi-desert. You see green. Humans,seeking refuge from the blazing sun,have changed what this city looks like. Further out,in the farms that you cant see through the dust haze,pumps run for hours in the day,pushing water out for paddy. Humans,seeking refuge from the parched summer,have changed what cultivation looks like. And,invisible beyond the curved green horizon,far,far to the south,are the endless farms of the centre of India,farms that exist where once,not so long ago,there was uninterrupted jungle.
Weve tried to beat the weather. But weather grows up and becomes climate,and then were doing the running.
For most of us in the cities,the apparently endless summer might dominate our days and make normal life difficult but,in the end,it is little more than an inconvenience. A short train ride away from us,however,families futures are balanced on a knife-edge,anxious eyes are fixed on the horizon,waiting for clouds and that sudden,swift gust of cooler air. It had become fashionable for a while to speak of how the economy was no longer dependent on the monsoon being a normal one. That was always a slightly inhuman,passionless way of looking at it. The numbers might no longer be hit as hard,but that does not mean that people arent. The contribution of industry and services to the GDP has grown,but their contribution to employment hasnt kept up. So agriculture still directly employs 60 per cent of India. And 60 per cent of agricultural land isnt irrigated. Our push-back against climate uncertainty simply hasnt been good enough.
The last time the rains were below normal was in 2002. (July that year saw less than half the expected rainfall.) Both the fiscal deficit and the growth rate suffered; and in places with particularly high indebtedness and particularly low rainfall,that parched,long summer saw the dreams of upwardly-mobile farming families shatter,and,some argue,caused seasons of higher-than-normal farmer suicides. Were living off the impact of that summer,politically,still: it contributed to the UPAs victory in 2004,to the alliances post-election agenda,and to the success of that agenda particularly the rural loan waiver.
The big difference between now and 2002 is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The UPAs flagship programme,which the government plans to extend,will be tested as never before. Prepare for any weaknesses in implementation to be thrown into glaring relief. But one thing that the government will look at from 2002 with hope is the anomalous figures for foodgrain stocks: that year grain reserves actually increased. (Which tells us that the old links,which were so easy to theorise about,between the monsoon,subsistence farming and food shortages,have broken down. The rural economy is a lot more complex than it used to be,and the economic and human cost of a failed monsoon doesnt have to be through famine.) We can all hope that will happen again this year,especially if the governments ambitious plans for a right-to-food programme are pushed through as quickly as possible to streamline distribution.
So,one lesson that could have been picked up by reading this far: those of us sweltering in the concrete heat-traps that we choose to call cities are fortunate. Yes,but that would be a grievously incomplete story. Because double-glazing and air-conditioning cannot insulate us from all the effects of the pitiless summer sun. Like urban India,in spite of being relatively closed and unexposed to modern structured finance,could not escape the financial crisis,a slowdown in rural growth will touch all our lives. After all,we have been told for a long time that the engine of recovery is going to be rural demand and that it might be immune to the modern business cycle. This isnt a good time for that engine to stop running. And the increased calls on the governments purse might well lead to a fund crunch for more urban projects; more borrowing from the government to cover those demands might put pressure on interest rates,squeezing monthly household budgets; if rural-urban migration responds as it did in earlier years,stress on our cities will increase. And all this assumes that food prices will not spiral out of control. Oh,and extra power will be diverted to farms,increasing load-shedding in cities just ask Chandigarh,which is running,in anticipation,a hopeful campaign urging people to switch off ACs.
The lesson isnt that insulating ourselves from the effects of the climate is a bad idea. No,the lesson is that weve got to push on regardless. We might have to be smarter about it (Is it necessary to grow paddy in semi-desert,really? Should we be incentivising that?),but we cannot stop. The trees that line Delhis roads and the NREGA are all of a piece trying to moderate the extremes,making our cities and our villages a little more liveable,regardless of what El Niño might throw at us.
mihir.sharma@expressindia.com
