After days of heavy rainfall in northern and eastern states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, rivers have risen above the danger mark affecting more than 50,000 people.

We eagerly wait for the monsoons, but without the Continental Drift, we may have never had this season

The season of festivals is here. But something feels different. My mother tells me that about 25 years ago, the winters would make a precise entry on Dussehra, which usually falls between September and October. A week before Dussehra, we would take the warm clothes out of an old trunk. "Now, it is late November when the weather becomes cold. Only a few days in December are cold enough to wear warm clothes," says my mother. We read in books that India has six distinct seasons—Grishma seasons (summer), Varsha (monsoon), Sharata (autumn), Hemanta (pre-winter), Shishira (winter) …

Every monsoon the incidences of caving in increases. Nature or human activities–who is to blame?

Why is the Indian monsoon so slippery? The monsoon of the Indian subcontinent is also shaped by the heating of the Tibetan plateau, the shape of continents and mountains, Eurasian snow cover, temperature difference between eastern and western flanks of the Indian ocean, and, arguably the most important, El Niño (“little boy” in Spanish as this event occurs around Christmas), a weather event triggered by a greater heating of the eastern Pacific near Ecuador than its western counterpart. A strong El Niño, more often than not, implies a weak monsoon. In the last 100 years, 19 out of 43 deficient monsoon years were …