Today at least nine people died in Rajasthan due to a heat wave. However, the candidates of the main parties ignore the problem and even in electoral programs it is only mentioned in a general way. The issue has greater relevance at the local level, but individual state initiatives have limited impact.
New Delhi () – The elections for the renewal of the Indian Parliament are taking place in stifling heat. In recent weeks local newspapers have frequently reported on the inconvenience caused by extreme heat. At least nine people died today in the state of Rajasthan, presumably from heat stroke. Yesterday the city of Barmer reached 48.8 degrees and tomorrow the polls will open in the capital, Delhi, with temperatures expected to be around 45 degrees. Several events were canceled due to the unbearable heat and many attributed the low participation of the first phase (there are seven in total and they will end in June) to the scorching heat, which discouraged people from leaving their homes. However, climate change remains (almost) completely absent from political discourses.
April and May have always been the hottest months in India, but climate changes in recent years have worsened the situation, causing longer, more frequent and intense heat waves. According to a report from the Center for Science and the Environmenta research center based in New Delhi, India experienced extreme weather conditions on approximately 90% of days in 2023.
These phenomena are not just about the heat: last year the monsoons killed 523 people, the highest number ever recorded, and caused $2.5 billion in damage. Roxy Mathew Koll, climatologist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, explained that “floods have tripled since the 1950s, while cyclones have increased 50% since the 1980s.”
Only in 2019 did references to climate change appear for the first time in the electoral posters of the Bharatiya Janata, the party in power that hopes to achieve victory, and the Congress, the main opposition party. For this round of elections, the parties have presented their plans with which they hope to improve India’s climate resilience, but in a very general way and without ever reiterating the concepts during electoral rallies. According to a 2022 study, between 1999 and 2019, only 0.3% of questions asked by Members of Parliament concerned the climate crisis. However, for many Indians the climate emergency is of primary importance: in a poll Two years ago, 81% of those interviewed declared they were “very concerned” about climate change.
Issues related to religion, caste and occupation still determine the political preferences of most Indians, Koll added, but he maintains that climate plays an important role when “the entire community is affected.”
Some 25,000 people in the Ennore neighborhood of the city of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu that lies on the Bay of Bengal, for example, had decided to boycott the elections, in part because they had not received any government aid after the cyclone. Michaung, which devastated the eastern coasts of southern India in December. But the boycott was called off when the local government said it would address the issue after the election.
The issue seems to have relevance, then, at a strictly local level. “Policy addressing climate change in India is not labeled as such, but that does not mean that climate change is not shaping Indian policy,” said Aditya Valiathan Pillai, a member of the Sustainable Futures Collaborative, an independent research organization. But most policies focus primarily on solving the consequences of climate change and not on the climate emergency itself, she explained.
In Sikkim, for example, where parliamentary and state Assembly elections are being held simultaneously, former chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling has promised to suspend construction of large hydroelectric projects because a flood last year from collapsing glacial lakes (known as GLOF) destroyed a dam and thousands of homes and infrastructure, and killed nearly a hundred people. After the tragedy, environmentalists stressed that the local government had been repeatedly warned about the risks of expanding the hydroelectric network.
Other local initiatives implemented in recent years in different states of India have been effective (in Telangana, for example, roofs have been painted white and new distributions have been created in hospitals for heat waves), but they are of measures that, implemented on a small scale, have limited effectiveness.
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