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Showing posts from June, 2023

Balia suffers and Mumbai stares

  More than 100 have died in Balia and Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh in last few days . These districts have experienced heatwave conditions. IMD has given orange alert warning (40℃ to 45℃) for these as well as other districts in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. For those who are aware, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Climate fiction ‘The Ministry for the Future’ opens with a stunning description of heatwave related deaths in Uttar Pradesh. What is happening now in Deoria and Balia district has uncanny resemblance to what author has imagined. In some sense, we have been made aware of what awaits us, though we have decided to bury it because it is inconvenient. Even now, these deaths are not officially attributed to heatwave. Here is what I think have happened. It is a hypothesis rather than a statement with some proof. Balia and Deoria are districts near Ganga, a large water body. Rising temperatures have caused greater evaporation of this water body leading to excessive humidity in the surr...