The monsoon has always been India’s great leveller, capable of reviving drought-stricken soils or unleashing floods that erase entire settlements. This year, like in the past several ones, its early arrival and erratic distribution have exposed a pattern that is becoming harder to dismiss—the monsoon no longer comes with a predictable rhythm, but rather as a volatile force reshaped by climate change. By the end of June this year, the southwest monsoon had already swept across the entire country—nine days ahead of its average schedule. From the deserts of Rajasthan, where over 554 mm of rain has already fallen—more than 50 per cent above normal—to the fragile Himalayan valleys of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh that have been battered with landslides, the rains have redrawn familiar maps of expectation, perhaps with a sense of alarm.
On one hand, Jharkhand has crossed 1,000 mm of rainfall, Gujarat stands at 641 mm, and Ladakh—among the driest regions in India—has received nearly three times its usual share. On the other hand, as the west and north are inundated, the east and northeast are parched. Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are facing deficits of more than one-third, Meghalaya over 40 per cent, and Bihar around 25 per cent. This polarity has come to capture the new face of the monsoon that is erratic, uneven, and increasingly violent. Nowhere is this volatility more devastating than in the Himalayas. In early August, a cloudburst in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi triggered flash floods that swept away homes and lives. Jammu and Kashmir has reported over 40 deaths from landslides near the Vaishno Devi shrine and across the valley, where rainfall rose to seven times the seasonal norm. Himachal Pradesh has seen bridges collapse and entire districts cut off. This new normal is eerily threatening.
The science on this front is unambiguous. Warmer oceans and hotter air mean the monsoon carries far more moisture than before. Each degree of warming increases atmospheric moisture by about 7 per cent, fuelling downpours when clouds burst against mountain slopes. Across South Asia, these sudden cloudbursts are striking with greater intensity, overwhelming fragile slopes, funnelling torrents into narrow valleys, and triggering deadly mudflows. Combined with glacier melt and deforestation, the results are catastrophic. However, governance remains trapped in denial. The default approach still remains reactive. Relief camps are constructed after homes are washed away, compensation is doled out after crops are destroyed, and emergency funds are granted after lives are lost. What is missing is systematic prevention of the chaos and destruction. Early-warning systems exist but are poorly translated into ground-level alerts. Pre-positioned supplies and evacuation drills are rare. Infrastructure continues to be built in hazard-prone zones, with road-widening projects and hydroelectric dams in ecologically fragile Himalayan belts accelerating slope instability. Compensatory afforestation is tokenistic at best—unable to match the ecological buffering capacity of native forests.
The tragedy is not India’s alone. Northwest Pakistan has witnessed ferocious floods that killed over 300 people in just two days this month. These shared disasters highlight what science has long warned i.e., the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush are a single fragile ecological unit spanning eight countries. Extreme weather in one corner reverberates across the region. And yet, even as the climate crisis binds the fates of millions, political divisions deepen. Climate change does not respect borders; its floods wash through them indiscriminately. Nations urgently need to transcend their disputes to build cooperative frameworks for early warning, water-sharing, and sustainable infrastructure. If that doesn’t happen, the human and economic costs will keep multiplying. Every cloudburst, every landslide, every submerged field in this era of climate crisis is a warning. To continue treating each calamity as natural is to deny the evidence staring us in the face. Relief cannot substitute for resilience. What India—and indeed South Asia—needs is a radical shift from short-term firefighting to long-term preparedness: climate-resilient infrastructure, slope-safe engineering, strict land-use controls, afforestation, and genuinely inclusive disaster management. More than that, it needs cross border research cooperation to put up a united front. The rains will keep coming, heavier and fiercer. The choice before us is stark—either to act now with foresight or to be condemned to recount the same stories of loss with every passing monsoon.