Technoglitch
Core Member
As hundreds of millions of people across Southeast Asia and India wait for the seasonal monsoons to roll in and wash away some of the region’s sweltering heat, the generally joyous anticipation has taken on a terrible new dynamic.
In large regions of Asia, a severe, years-long drought has ravaged the normally fertile soils – and thrown the lives of millions of families into chaos and economic uncertainty. As of now, it’s not even certain annual rains will bring relief from the agony.
As a result of the drought, crops of staples such as rice, and crucial export crops such as cane sugar, have failed from south Vietnam to India’s populous state of Maharashtra. Farmers are left with cracked, dry earth and no crops to show for all the money they sank into the soil. Their families are hurting. But the taps, as well as the fields, are bone dry. There are now tens of millions of people who are suffering through stark water shortages, lining up for hours or even overnight with plastic vessels for water trucked into their communities, or brought from afar on railway tankers. A 12-year-old village girl in a drought-hit part of Maharashtra reportedly died recently of heat stroke after being sent to fetch water, and last month a 10-year-old Indian girl reportedly fell to death in a well as she tried to draw up desperately needed water.
But it is India where the most people are hardest hit. El Nino’s impact has even begun to alter politics on the subcontinent, as it has in Indonesia, where surging forest fires renewed pressure on Indonesian President Joko Widodo. In both countries, the weather was at least partly responsible for deflating and derailing hopeful new political mandates.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s majority government in New Delhi has been besieged over the past two years as the rival Indian National Congress mustered weary, frustrated farmers to oppose Mr. Modi’s attempt to reform India’s arduous land-acquisition laws. Last year at a protest against these reforms, a farmer climbed a tree and hung himself in defiance – shaming the government. Suicide among Indian farmers is a tragic last resort to indebtedness and crop loss, and there have now been two years of bad drought, combined with heavy rains that fell on parched fields and destroyed crops.
El Nino’s disastrous effects still hindering Asia’s prosperity - The Globe and Mail
In large regions of Asia, a severe, years-long drought has ravaged the normally fertile soils – and thrown the lives of millions of families into chaos and economic uncertainty. As of now, it’s not even certain annual rains will bring relief from the agony.
As a result of the drought, crops of staples such as rice, and crucial export crops such as cane sugar, have failed from south Vietnam to India’s populous state of Maharashtra. Farmers are left with cracked, dry earth and no crops to show for all the money they sank into the soil. Their families are hurting. But the taps, as well as the fields, are bone dry. There are now tens of millions of people who are suffering through stark water shortages, lining up for hours or even overnight with plastic vessels for water trucked into their communities, or brought from afar on railway tankers. A 12-year-old village girl in a drought-hit part of Maharashtra reportedly died recently of heat stroke after being sent to fetch water, and last month a 10-year-old Indian girl reportedly fell to death in a well as she tried to draw up desperately needed water.
But it is India where the most people are hardest hit. El Nino’s impact has even begun to alter politics on the subcontinent, as it has in Indonesia, where surging forest fires renewed pressure on Indonesian President Joko Widodo. In both countries, the weather was at least partly responsible for deflating and derailing hopeful new political mandates.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s majority government in New Delhi has been besieged over the past two years as the rival Indian National Congress mustered weary, frustrated farmers to oppose Mr. Modi’s attempt to reform India’s arduous land-acquisition laws. Last year at a protest against these reforms, a farmer climbed a tree and hung himself in defiance – shaming the government. Suicide among Indian farmers is a tragic last resort to indebtedness and crop loss, and there have now been two years of bad drought, combined with heavy rains that fell on parched fields and destroyed crops.
El Nino’s disastrous effects still hindering Asia’s prosperity - The Globe and Mail
