While temperatures hit close to 50o Celsius, Indian parties say little about climate change
Today, at least nine people died in Rajasthan from possible heatstroke; yet the main parties ignore the problem, which is hardly present in their election platforms. The issue is more relevant at the local level, but the actions by individual states have a limited impact.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – India’s elections are taking place amid a stifling heat wave. Over the last few weeks, the country’s media have frequently reported on the inconveniences caused by the great heat. Today, at least nine people died in the Indian state of Rajasthan from an apparent heatstroke.
Yesterday, the temperature reached 48.8o Celsius in the city of Barmer, while in the Indian capital of New Delhi, voters are called to cast their ballot tomorrow with the temperature expected to reach 45o Celsius.
Several events were cancelled due to the unbearable heat and many attributed the low turnout in the first phase (out of seven till June) to the scorching heat, which discouraged people from leaving their homes. Yet, climate change continues to be largely absent from political debates.
April and May have always been the hottest months in India, but climate change in recent years has worsened the situation, causing more extensive, frequent, and intense heat waves.
According to a report by the Centre for Science and Environment, a research organisation based in New Delhi, India experienced extreme weather for about 90 per cent of the time in 2023.
Last year, monsoons killed 523 people, the highest number ever recorded, causing US$ 2.5 billion in damage.
Roxy Mathew Koll, a climatologist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, explained that “floods have increased threefold since the 1950s and cyclones have increased by 50 per cent since the 1980s.”
Only in 2019 did the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), refer to climate change in their election posters.
In this election cycle, the parties have presented plans to improve India's climate resilience, but in a very general way and without ever focusing on them during election rallies.
According to a 2022 survey, between 1999 and 2019, only 0.3 per cent of all parliamentary questions were about the climate crisis.
Yet for many Indians, the climate emergency is very important. In a survey two years ago, 81 per cent of respondents said they were "very concerned" about climate change.
Issues related to religion, caste and occupation still shape voting behaviour of most Indians, Koll noted, but climate does play an important role when "the entire community is affected".
About 25,000 voters in Ennore, a neighbourhood in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu on the Bay of Bengal, initially planned to boycott the elections in part because they got no government support after Cyclone Michaung devastated the eastern coast of southern India in December.
The boycott was later called off after the local government said it would address the issue following the vote.
“The politics of climate change in India is just not labelled neatly as 'climate change' but it does not mean that climate change is not shaping Indian politics," said Aditya Valiathan Pillai, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Sustainable Futures Collaborative, an independent climate change research organisation.
Most policies focus primarily on coping with the consequences of climate change rather than on the climate emergency itself, he explained.
In Sikkim, where elections to Parliament and the state assembly are being held concurrently, former Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling has vowed to suspend construction of large hydropower projects after a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) last year swept away a dam and thousands of homes and infrastructure, killing a hundred people.
After the tragedy, environmentalists pointed out that the local government had been repeatedly warned about the risks of expanding the hydroelectric network.
Other local initiatives in individual Indian states in recent years have proven effective (in Telangana, for example, roofs are painted white and new heatwave wards have been created in hospitals), but these measures have limited effectiveness when implemented on a small scale.
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