The summer heat has been so acute this year in India that more than 40,000 people have had heat strokes, and several hundred of them have died. In Delhi, water and electricity consumption has broken all previous records. Some reports suggest that the temperatures crossed 50 degrees centigrade in many places adjoining Delhi. In Bihar, school students fainted on their way to school. Some developed complications inside the school, forcing the government to announce an unscheduled school closure.
On the agricultural front, the summer crops — green gram, black gram, cowpea, jowar, bajra, ragi, maize, groundnut, and sesame — have been badly hit. It’s going to increase the prices of these commodities in the coming months. The production of vegetables and fruits has been significantly low, spiking their prices abnormally. This has resulted in people preferring potatoes to green vegetables. In rural India, the supply of vegetables has been meagre during this period. The increase in potato consumption has depleted its stock and increased its price to alarming levels.
During the election campaign, political leaders fell ill due to the heat. Those who could avoid election duty, like top leaders, certainly took advantage and attended as few rallies as possible. But election officials and security personnel had a harrowing time managing the affair.
But, surprisingly, no one talked about it in election speeches. Leaders talked about issues that ordinary Indians could not relate to. In the summer heat, the divide between Bharat and India becomes too apparent. But sadly, no one was talking about the suffering and sweat of the Indians who live without air conditioners. Imagine how farming can be even imagined in such sweltering heat.
In such heat, tongues can lose balance and blurt out statements that one may not in normal circumstances. This happened in good measure, from educated politicians and their families to usual culprits. However, the case of political leaders showing arrogance or belligerence is worth considering.
Running out of ideas after being in the government or even in the opposition for ten years is natural. We all need to work on this state of oversaturation in our respective professions. Finding new ideas to keep the tempo going is not easy.
How do you get out of this? It’s here that knowledge has a role: the deeper it is, the longer you stay afloat. In politics, it’s the ideology or the strength of the ideology that a specific political party believes in or espouses that matters.
Even the most ideologically grounded and people-savvy party leaders often don’t know the right thing to do or say. In these situations, they end up giving knee-jerk replies and speeches, which the people take as a sign of arrogance. Believing in and practising the party’s innate philosophy can show them the way out of indecisions, dilemmas, and difficult situations.
If BJP leaders or junior party workers have become arrogant, it’s because they lack a grasp of their party’s philosophy. Going back to the core and brushing up their understanding of the party’s basic philosophy can help them find direction. It’s the same for any political party. A political party that lacks a strong ideological basis cannot flourish and remain popular for long.
Returning to the notorious summer heat this year, the exact mechanism of returning to the roots and nourishing it drop by drop would work. Indian summers have always been notorious, but they are becoming unbearably acute. Over the past several decades, infrastructure building and rapid urbanization have resulted in massive deforestation and loss of water bodies. This must be reversed if India ever gets its climate issues in order.
The water scarcity in Delhi in peak summer underscores that cities of Delhi’s size and population are unsustainable. We have many such cities in India. Mumbai couples don’t get enough private space to live a normal conjugal life. It is a story spoken, heard, and forgotten umpteen times. From people forced to travel in overcrowded trains to live in inhuman conditions in cities, the India story is not a shining bright spot on the global economic map. It’s a story of people’s struggle, hardship, and survival. Going back to the roots is the only solution.
India’s 58% of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood, while the agriculture sector contributes around 15% to the Indian GDP. This is some food for thought and shows why India must prioritize its villages.
Any party that wants to rule the country can’t ignore the growing climate crisis and how it affects the ability of poor farmers to grow their crops and be self-reliant. (IPA Service)
