Heavy monsoon rains have unleashed the worst flooding in three decades across the Punjab region of India and Pakistan, leaving a trail of devastation that has claimed dozens of lives, displaced millions, and crippled the agricultural heartland.
The disaster has prompted both humanitarian crises and political friction as authorities struggle to cope with the scale of the destruction, The Guardian revealed.
The current floods are a result of extreme weather patterns, with intense monsoon rains causing rivers like the Sutlej, Chenab, and Ravi to swell to unprecedented levels. The situation has been exacerbated by the controlled release of water from dams upstream, leading to a humanitarian emergency on both sides of the border. This crisis highlights the increasing vulnerability of the region, often referred to as the “food bowl” of South Asia, to climate change-induced extreme weather events.
In India’s Punjab state, the floods have claimed at least 43 lives and impacted over 1,900 villages, with more than 256,000 people affected. The state has declared itself a disaster-hit region, with officials noting the floods are more severe than those in 1988. The agricultural sector has been particularly hard-hit, with hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland submerged, causing massive losses to staple crops like paddy, cotton, and sugarcane. Farmers, many already in debt, have seen their livelihoods vanish overnight. The state’s finance minister has criticized the central government for its lack of financial support, accusing them of showing no empathy towards the affected population.
Across the border, Pakistan’s Punjab province faces an even more dire situation. The floods, exacerbated by water released from Indian dams, have forced the evacuation of nearly two million people and submerged around 4,000 villages. Officials state this is the first time the Sutlej, Chenab, and Ravi rivers have all reached such dangerous levels simultaneously. While relief camps have been established, there is a critical shortage of food, medicine, and clean water. The humanitarian crisis underscores the growing vulnerability of the region to extreme weather events, a phenomenon increasingly linked to climate change.
