624 killed in ongoing monsoon season, highest in Gujarat: Data

Home ministry data revealed that in the 2023 south-west monsoon season since June, 624 people have died in India due to rain- related incidents, almost 32% less than last year for the same period, primarily because of lower rainfall in eastern and central India

Updated on: Jul 16, 2023, 24:17:53 IST

By Chetan Chauhan

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New Delhi:

Shimla: Damaged sheds of the Bhattakufer apple market after a landslide due to heavy monsoon rainfall on June 12. (PTI)

In the 2023 south-west monsoon season since June, 624 people have died in India due to rain- related incidents, almost 32% less than last year for the same period, primarily because of lower rainfall in eastern and central India, home ministry data showed.

The home ministry’s report on deaths and damage to property, including agriculture, across the states clearly links deaths and loss to property with heavy rainfall as many parts of India have received lower than normal rainfall this year compared to 2022. It is corroborated by rainfall data of the India Meteorological Department, which shows 12 states including Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have received deficient rainfall.

The interesting case in point is Himachal Pradesh, which recorded 223 mm of rainfall, highest in the past 50 years for some places such as Solan and Una , and has been focus of rain fury, with close to 60,000 people stranded across the state. Most of them have been rescued by now.

So far this monsoon season, 99 people have died in Himachal Pradesh compared to 187 in 2022, the ministry’s data showed. Explaining this, a state government disaster management official said there was no major road accident during rains this year because of better alert system on landslides and rain fury started after the peak tourist season, which ended by June 30. However, property damage this year in Himachal was almost five times of 2022, data shows.

In fact, more people died in Gujarat (103) than Himachal, probably because of cyclone Biparjoy in June and related heavy rainfall later. Karnataka reported 87 deaths and Rajasthan 36, according to home ministry data.

The severely flood-hit Punjab and Haryana have reported 11 and 19 deaths, respectively, compared to five and zero last year. Still, several areas in the two states, such as Ludhiana and Patiala in Punjab and Yamunanagar and Karnal in Haryana, are still flooded.

Comparison of home ministry’s daily situation reports showed that in 2022, 193 people died in Assam compared to 38 this southwest monsoon season. In 2022, 89 people died in Meghalaya and Manipur because of heavy rains compared to eight this year. Both these northeastern states have recorded deficient rainfall in the 2023 monsoon season.

Another reason for lower total deaths this year is not much rainfall in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, which together reported 187 deaths in 2022 as compared to 92 this year till June 15.

Around two lakh hectares of farmland has been affected by the monsoon rains this year compared to 2.48 lakh hectares in 2022, the report also said.

Damage to homes this year has been less than in 2022 because of lower rains in the plains of India, the report suggested.

Various studies have shown that the southwest monsoon is getting erratic with increase in extreme weather events in the past two decades.

Since 2013, where thousands of people died in Kedarnath in Uttarakhand because of extreme rainfall, there has not been a single year which has not seen a major extreme rainfall event, according to the weather bureau.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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