‘We must draw from India’s climate history. This respected topography, hydrology and nature as capital’

Mahesh Rangarajan is professor of history and environmental studies at Ashoka University. Speaking to Times Evoke, he discusses India’s rich climatic history — and the insights it offers in times of increasing weather turbulence:
Several parts of India have swung from extraordinary heatwaves to extreme rainfall in a matter of days — just one day ago, Delhi, which was reeling under severe heat, experienced the maximum daily rainfall seen in June in 88 years. This huge volume of water fell over a few hours, flooding the capital, leaving its roads waterlogged and traffic submerged. India has seen weather swings before — but today, the rate of stochasticity or unpredictable, sudden changes has increased. Some of this is due to global warming and the atmospheric concentrations of heating emissions. But some comes from self-inflicted wounds, which also reflect a lack of awareness of India’s rich climate history.
IN A FEW HOURS, JUST LIKE THAT: Several regions of India recently endured a blistering heatwave which claimed lives and challenged infrastructure — in a matter of days though, many parts were experiencing intense rains and flooding which broke historical records (Photo: iStock)

India has a tropical system and a monsoon regime, with a clearly defined wet and dry period. Today, the dry period is growing exceptionally parched and extremely hot, testing the ability of vertebrates to survive. The flipside is very wet periods of intense rain in short durations. Such tumult, impacting people’s lives, well-being and resources, reemphasises the importance of climate history. Any subject of the past is seen through the lens of the present. In the 20th century, after World Wars I and II in particular, many fields of study emerged researching how to create conditions for international peace and prevent nuclear war. Today, studies look at how to achieve peace — with nature. Climate history explores how human civilisations over time understood the nature of the biosphere — the thin skin of blue-green in which all life exists.
UNCERTAIN HARVESTS: Rain-dependent Indian agriculture faces climate change (Photo: iStock)
Humanity has relied on climatic stability for thousands of years, including in the recent Holocene, characterised by regular atmospheric, weather and moisture conditions. Such stability enabled the thriving of societies. Many of these conditions are changing now. Societies across Asia and Africa experience the monsoon — earlier, this weather phenomenon had specific dates by when it would wax and wane, its waters enriching Earth accordingly. The stability of these dates shaped much of Indian civilisation — consider how rain-regulated our agricultural cycles are and how the availability of water helped create cities, which could depend on a flourishing countryside. As several of these conditions are transformed, we can expect turbulence in what remains a largely agrarian country. Already, the times of sowing and ripening for crops like wheat are changing, influenced by altering winters and transformed rain. India has multiple agro-climatic zones which grow diverse crops — agriculturalists everywhere will face climate challenges now.
Yet, unless we draw from our climatic history, we will be locked into cycles of harsh heat and intense rain, with their accompanying impacts. Heatwaves in cities will intensify unless we retain old urban planning styles, liberally planting shade-giving trees — from neem to peepul, tamarind to jamuns, whose sour purple fruit were eagerly picked by children in the monsoon and loved by birds and small animals too — instead of concretising and deforesting. We also need more intelligent construction — once, we had low-slung buildings with high ceilings and cross-ventilation which made summer bearable. Today, we live and work in towers of metal and glass which intensify heat and need air-conditioning to cool. As we increase air-conditioning units, we create urban heat islands pumping out more emissions — these deepen heatwaves. Older forms of construction were far more sensitive to our ecotype.

Interestingly, climate history spotlights wetlands as a buffer between heatwave and rain. It is noteworthy that Delhi’s recent rain and flooding were preceded by a period of harsh water scarcity. To prevent this, we need to preserve wetlands from being taken over for construction because these are crucial for absorbing rain and renewing aquifers. The book ‘Shades of Blue’, by Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli, analyses issues of water across diverse Indian cities, each of which have their own ecological stories — yet, one common factor binds these locations, from Guwahati to Mumbai and Delhi. They have all been draining their wetlands, causing drought vulnerability in summer and floods in the rains. The flooding in Delhi impacted areas urbanised in the last few years where earlier, rivulets flowed or old stream beds existed. In many places, housing and infrastructure have been built on low-lying areas while channels leading to the Yamuna have been blocked. We need to bring back a sense of respect for topography and local hydrology in what we build — and leave alone.

History is learning of the past to be enlightened for the present. There were long periods of climatic instability in the past too — interestingly, India in the 17th century and Tokugawa Japan coped better than many societies in Europe. One reason was India’s elites valued nature. Before the arrival of the British, Indian rulers often gave people interest-free loans to build check dams or wells. The Vijayanagara empire, as Kathleen Morrison’s research shows, provided for long dry periods. There could even be a decade when the monsoon fell short but populations adapted. They used crops which needed less water — today’s push for millets is apt — and learnt how to conserve water in lakes and tanks. While many of these rulers could be exploitative or hierarchical, they saw nature as capital. Their perspective was different from contemporary times when we imagine ‘capital’ as the number of tall buildings, miles of highways and colours of expensive vehicles around us. These are all legitimate aspirations but seeing nature as capital meant investing in resources which would protect us from nature’s turbulence, perhaps the most dangerous existential threat. Our climatic history shows a good deal of cooperation thus between rulers, elites and common citizens. We should take a leaf out of these lessons. As both its heatwaves and floods show, Delhi must protect its floodplain — if the Yamuna can flood naturally, water will sink through sand and aquifer and provide protection from extreme weather impacts.
PEACE FOR YOU & ME: Preserving wetlands is a boon for humans and other species (Photo: iStock)

We also need more discussion of climate issues in our political discourse but these should be framed differently. Voters vote for day-to-day welfare issues — if a political party posited it would recharge the water in aquifers, so farmers don’t have to drill hundreds of feet for a drop, that would bring cultivators to it. If a party promised to cover large parts of a city with greenery where the young could play and the elderly relax, both these groups would support it. If a party promised to protect India’s beautiful birds and animals, those who enjoy biophilia or a love of nature would form a constituency for it. These issues should be presented in positive ways, bridging the gaps between India’s ecological realities and solutions — some of which lie in our own climatic past.