The year, 2025, has been a continuing saga of climate tragedies for many parts of India. It has also been the year when political rhetoric on how the nation guides the world got shriller. In August, Punjab, our breadbasket, got flooded; millions faced displacement when the Beas and the Sutlej overflowed after extreme rains. The tragedy soon faded away from public memory. Next, in the rugged hills of Uttarakhand, cloudbursts and landslides tore through tens of villages, wiping out entire hamlets, homes, small hotels, and footbridges. People eking out a living from tourism found themselves displaced overnight, their livelihoods lost and lives shattered. Roads and access routes became history. The fragility of mountain livelihoods came to fore as the deluge erased the future of thousands.
Earlier, in summer, heat waves enveloped much of central and southern India, hitting the poorest the hardest, particularly in the countryside and small towns. If the north witnessed flooding in August, much of western and central Maharashtra, particularly Marathwada, was cursed in September. Historically drought-prone, that region bore the brunt of heavy rains and floods. A region hardened by years of water stress and neglect was suddenly caught in the vortex of excess rain and flash floods. Grapes, sugarcane, soybeans, maize, and other crops got destroyed completely over thousands of acres, and homes and livestock got washed away. The destruction of poorer households sparked a mental health emergency and left many uncertain about their futures. On India’s east coast, Cyclone Montha wreaked havoc in October. The storm flattened crops and battered farmlands, leaving behind a trail of losses.
There was more, but these four episodes are enough to lay bare how shifting climatic patterns are erasing traditional coping strategies of people. India experienced “extreme weather events on 99 per cent of the days in the first nine months” of 2025, the Centre for Science and Environment says in its 2025 climate assessment report. The data are glaring: extreme weather events claimed more than 4,000 human lives — a 48% increase from 2022 — and over 3,000 of those lives were lost during the monsoon in floods and landslides. Crops over 47 million hectares were destroyed — a 400% rise in four years. More than 30 states and Union territories recorded extreme weather for eight consecutive months. The report and the anecdotes portray a broader map of a country torn between ecological volatility and tattered regional economies.
Add to it the sudden impact of the tariffs imposed by the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, and you have a tragedy that is accentuated multiple times over.
Taken together, the year’s events expose three interlinked policy gaps. First, water governance remains fragmented, even wanting. Second, disaster-climate finance and preparedness are a hoax. Relief and meagre cash compensation remains the only policy response; they are band aids. Finally, what matters is the political economy. Macro growth and industrial production data can be misguiding. Real resilience requires attention and budgets toward rural infrastructure and local health systems to cope with consequences and adaptation at scale before — not after — a calamity strikes. The climate and economy are two intertwined spirals.
The next budget and policy cycle must accept that managing heat, floods, landslides, cyclones and droughts is a matter of urgency. We would be naive if we buy into delusions of becoming a world leader given the predicament our masses face in the hinterlands. If policymakers fail to act or recognise that ‘normal’ weather no longer exists, 2026 and our future will see such stories morph from episodic occurrences into chronic national crises.