Almost 970 million Indians are voting in general elections amid sweltering heat and unpredictable weather extremes exacerbated by human-caused climate change, leading to loss of livelihood, forced migration and increasingly difficult living conditions for millions across the country.
Voters are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. In their election manifestos, India’s top political parties, including the governing Bharatiya Janata Party and the main opposition, the Congress party, have made multiple promises to act on climate damage and reduce emissions of planet-heating gases.
But there has been little talk about climate change on the campaign trail.
“Climate change is still not among the headlines during these elections despite its obvious impact on millions of Indian lives,” said Anjal Prakash, author of multiple United Nations climate reports.
I feel like the only thing that will meaningfully change things anywhere is a climate-driven mass casualty event, like the opening chapter of Ministry for the Future (millions of deaths due to wet bulb temps exceeding the human body’s ability to cool itself for like a week straight). But it’ll also probably only change environmental policies significantly in the country within which the mass casualty event occurs.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Indian subcontinent — surrounded by ocean on three sides and the Himalayan ranges to its north — is vulnerable to sea level rise, severe storms, heavy floods and melting glaciers.
Around 25,000 people in the Ennore neighborhood in Chennai planned to boycott the Indian general elections in part due to lack of government support post Cyclone Michaung, which devastated the eastern coasts of southern India in December 2023.
Issues related to religion, caste and employment still determine most Indians’ political preferences, but Koll said that at local levels, climate is playing a role when “the entire community is affected.”
Local and federal authorities have managed to adapt partially to increasingly frequent cyclones by evacuating coastal residents in time and drastically reducing loss of life.
“All the politicians promise to solve problems related to flooding but after elections are over, no one cares about it,” said Yaad Ali, a 55-year-old farmer in Sandahkhaiti, a village located on a small river island in north eastern India’s Assam state.
Badruddin Ajmal, the leader of the All India United Democratic Front, a regional party in Assam and the main opposition in the state, has repeatedly talked about providing for long term relief from flooding during his campaigns this election.
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