South Asia’s Worst Monsoon Flooding In Years — 1,200 Dead Across India, Bangladesh, & Nepal

August 30th, 2017 by James Ayre

More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh, and Nepal in recent days as a result of the flooding accompanying the worst monsoon season in years, according to recent reports.

So, while the disaster unfolding in Texas and Louisiana is of course worth keeping an eye on, it should be realized that there are disasters occurring elsewhere as well.

One thing that both the flooding in the US and in South Asia have in common, of course, is that they are harbingers of things to come. As temperatures continuing rising around the world, and thus evaporation rates as well, extreme flooding events will become more and more common.

With regard to the monsoon flooding in South Asia, there are now many millions of people in the region that are homeless. Mass damage to agricultural fields has also been reported in various regions.

“This year farming has collapsed due to floods and we will witness a sharp rise in unemployment,” explained Anirudh Kumar, a disaster management official in Patna, the capital of the state of Bihar.

Aljazeera provides more: “Government officials in India’s eastern state of Bihar told Reuters news agency on Friday that at least 379 people had been killed over the past few days, with thousands sheltered in relief camps away from their inundated homes.

“In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, at least 88 people were killed when floods swamped nearly half of the vast state of 220 million people. Rajan Kumar, a federal interior ministry official in New Delhi overseeing the rescue and relief operations, told Reuters news agency that at least 850 people had been killed in six flood-affected states in the past month.”

“‘A second wave of floods led to widespread destruction,’ he explained. ‘We will have to provide immediate rehabilitation aid to help millions affected directly.'”

As far as the situation outside of India, at least 150 people have been killed as a result of the flooding in Nepal, and 90,000 homes have been destroyed; and 134 people have died in Bangladesh.

Altogether, the flooding actually submerged more than one-third of Bangladesh. As in, a third of the whole country was submerged under water by the floods. Needless to say, there has been extensive damage to the agriculture there — with crops on 10,583 hectares of land having been completely washed away, and a further 600,587 hectares of farmland also being damaged.

Things are only going to get worse from here on out in the region. Mass migrations out of the region will begin intensifying over the coming decades.











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