Bihar

DELHI: It was around 8pm when Abdul Wahab saw that the flood water had reached his doorstep and was rising steadily. By 1am, water started entering his house. That was when his children panicked and started crying. “I tried to calm them and told them not to worry as I was there,” said the 32-year-old. Somehow he managed to move them to the roof of a neighbour’s house. But “the situation became dire” that night, with the rising waters also bringing the threat of snakes, scorpions and leeches. “We couldn’t sleep … The whole night we were shivering in the cold wind and rain. Since we were on top of the roof, there was no way to stop water falling on the children,” he said. “We were in despair.” They lost all the grain they had stored, their clothes and other belongings. Every house in their village in India’s Bihar state was flooded that night, he added. Torrential monsoon rains this year in the world’s second most-populous nation have caused rivers to overflow their ... » Learn More about Struggle and suffering in India as climate change bites, but what next after ‘brutal’ floods?

GUWAHATI, India: Monsoon floods have swamped large parts of India's densely populated eastern states, forcing more than a million people into makeshift shelters despite the risk of coronavirus, senior officials said on Thursday (Jul 16). Torrential annual rains are crucial for agriculture in South Asia, but this year India is also grappling with the virus, which has infected 968,875 people and killed 24,915, health authorities say. The floods have killed at least 10 people and injured more than 70 in the states of Assam, Bihar and Jharkhand, where heavy rain has submerged thousands of villages in the past 24 hours as authorities battle to ensure social distancing in relief camps. "We have floods taking a deadly turn and simultaneously we are fighting the pandemic spreading its tentacles everywhere," Assam's health minister, Hemant Biswa Sarma, told Reuters. At a time when world attention is focused on the crisis in the United States and South America, a human tragedy is ... » Learn More about Floods ravage eastern India as COVID-19 infections surge

Image: vm2002/Istock.com via ETX Daily Up Will we still be able to eat rice whenever we want in 30 years? That’s the question asked by a team of American researchers from the University of Illinois, who conducted a field study in India, one of the world’s largest rice-growing areas. They found that investing in soil conservation technology and limiting waste at harvest time are the main ways to reduce the risk of rice shortages over the next 30 years. The research focused on rice plantations at the farm of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia in Bihar, northeast India. The objective was to estimate rice yield and water demand by 2050, and to assess how rice farmers can adapt to the effects of climate change. “As the weather changes, it affects temperature, rainfall, and carbon dioxide concentration. These are essential ingredients for crop growth, especially for rice,” explains Prasanta Kalita, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the ... » Learn More about Is climate change threatening our rice consumption?