Nature’s Warning: Why India Must Declare a Climate Emergency

For generations, the monsoon was India’s most reliable season. Farmers prayed for its arrival, poets celebrated its abundance, and planners built calendars around its rhythms. Today, that rhythm has broken. The rains are no longer predictable, and their fury is no longer benign. Torrential downpours across Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir have turned fields and cities alike into lakes. Villages lie submerged, bridges have collapsed, and lives have been swept away. Last week, in J&K, dozens were killed as cloud burst and flash floods washed away bridges and houses and forced the suspension of the Vaishno Devi pilgrimage, a spiritual and economic lifeline for the region. It is part of a pattern, one that grows more menacing each year.

The monsoon, once a blessing, is becoming a curse. If India continues to respond with patchwork relief instead of systemic reform, the cost will be measured not just in money or lives lost but in the sustainability of its very development model. The time has come to recognise the obvious: India must declare a climate emergency and act accordingly.

The toll of the current floods

Punjab has been forced to declare all 23 districts disaster-affected, with over 1,200 villages under water and Gurdaspur among the worst hit. At least 30 people have died there, and many more are displaced. In Haryana, towns such as Ambala and Hisar are swamped in waist-deep water, hundreds of schools closed, and daily life paralysed. The Yamuna in Delhi has risen above the danger level, flooding markets and displacing nearly 20,000 people. In Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, landslides and damaged roads have caused major disruptions. Jammu is struggling with broken bridges and stranded pilgrims, while in Kashmir, homes, orchards, and farms are underwater.

The Supreme Court too has now stepped in. A Bench led by the Chief Justice of India expressed alarm at the scale of devastation across Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir, noting reports of illegal felling of trees in the fragile Himalayan belt. The judges pointed to stark visuals of logs drifting in floodwaters, warning that unchecked deforestation and ecological destruction are magnifying the force of extreme weather. The Court has sought responses from the Union government, the National Disaster Management Authority and the governments of the affected states, while hearing a petition demanding a special investigation into recurring Himalayan disasters. Earlier this year, it had even cautioned that Himachal Pradesh risked “disappearing” if destruction continued unchecked. Such scenes now recur with numbing regularity. They are less natural calamities than man-made disasters, the predictable outcome of reckless planning, ecological neglect and political complacency.

Lessons unlearned

India has had ample warning. In 2015, Chennai’s inundation was traced not merely to heavy rain but to the destruction of wetlands and unchecked real-estate development. Who can forget what happened in Bengaluru, the country’s tech capital, saw its office parks and gated communities turned into islands in 2022 because its lakes and storm-water channels had been filled with concrete. Gurugram’s glittering towers now sit on what were once natural watercourses, ensuring that each monsoon brings fresh chaos. Srinagar’s devastating floods in 2014 exposed the vulnerability of the Kashmir valley to encroachment and mismanagement.

Other examples abound. Mumbai, which endures crippling water-logging almost every year, has seen mangroves cleared and drainage neglected. Kerala’s floods of 2018, which killed nearly 500 people, were linked by experts to over-building in ecologically sensitive zones. In each case, the disaster was amplified not by rain or cloudbursts alone but by man’s reshaping of the landscape. Yet, once waters recede, the impulse is not reform but forgetfulness. Builders resume construction, governments announce compensation packages, and citizens return to business as usual. The cycle repeats, until the next catastrophe.

Climate change is playing a major part. The monsoon are becoming erratic that once were stable. Longer dry spells are punctuated by sudden, violent cloudbursts. Western disturbances that once brought light winter rains now combine with monsoon surges to unleash deluges. Farmers, who once relied on the rains to nourish their crops, now fear them as destroyers. Equally our developing cities are disastrous with no planned drainage systems or ecofriendly buildings. The science is clear. Climate change is intensifying rainfall patterns and accelerating glacial melt, raising river volumes beyond their natural thresholds. India is a victim of these global and natural forces, but it is also complicit, having pursued growth by levelling forests, straightening rivers and treating environmental safeguards as disposable.

Declaring a climate emergency

What is needed is not just disaster relief but systemic recognition of the crisis. A climate emergency declaration would be more than symbolism. It would place sustainability at the core of policy, forcing every new road, dam or housing colony to be assessed not just for economic returns but ecological costs. It would signal that environmental survival is a national security issue, not a side project. Such a declaration must be backed by three pillars. Enforcement: India already has laws against illegal encroachment, weak environmental clearances and deforestation. But implementation is lax. Punishments must be strict and consistent. Construction that blocks natural drainage or flattens hillsides should invite penalties as severe as financial fraud.

Planning: Cities must restore wetlands, reopen drainage channels and protect floodplains. Himalayan development must be restrained, with ecologically sensitive zones placed under strict protection. Urban building codes must incorporate climate resilience, from green roofs to permeable pavements.

Expertise: Climate scientists, hydrologists and environmental planners must be embedded into government. Decisions on infrastructure, agriculture and energy must integrate climate forecasts and ecological assessments.

The cost of neglect is already clear. Floods and droughts slow down the economy, wipe out crops, and drain money on relief, insurance and rebuilding. The human toll is even worse, lives lost, families displaced, children missing school. Yet no one takes real responsibility. Governments approve projects on floodplains, forests are cut for highways, and officials look the other way. Citizens are not blameless either, grabbing land, seeking exemptions and mistaking concrete for progress. Unless accountability is enforced, India will stay stuck in the same cycle of disaster, compensation, and reconstruction. What is needed is not just money, but responsibility, political, bureaucratic, and civic.

India rightly aspires to growth. Its people deserve rising incomes, modern infrastructure and jobs. But the current model, in which forests are felled, hillsides gouged and cities sealed, is unsustainable. Each monsoon exposes the contradiction. Concrete jungles may symbolise modernity, but if they are waterlogged every July, their promise is hollow. The choice is not between growth and survival. It is between reckless growth and sustainable growth. The latter requires green building codes, protection of rivers and forests, investment in renewable energy and transport, and above all, a recognition that nature cannot be endlessly coerced.

The fury of this year’s monsoon is a warning. Punjab’s submerged villages, Haryana’s inundated towns, Delhi’s swollen Yamuna, J &K’s bridges and stranded pilgrims, residential colonies, fields under water, these are not isolated misfortunes but symptoms of a deeper crisis. The disasters in Chennai, Kerala, Assam, Mumbai and Bengaluru were all chapters of the same story. India has reached an inflection point. Let us not walk towards self-destruction. Declare a climate emergency, enforce environmental law and integrate science and research into governance, Perhaps that is a reality and we need to accept it. Future generations will not forgive inaction. They will ask why warnings were ignored, why laws were not enforced, why rivers were blocked and forests cut. The crisis is already here—seen in flooded towns, broken bridges, and uprooted lives. India must act now or face the cost of its own neglect. The choice is stark. Either India learns to live with its monsoon in harmony, or it will perish under its fury.

Surinder Singh Oberoi,

National Editor Greater Kashmir