India under its longest-ever heatwave, with worse to come
India under its longest-ever heatwave, with worse to come
The government’s top weather expert warned that people will face increasingly oppressive temperatures. Read more at straitstimes.com.
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If there's a silver lining to this, is that the people of one of the most populous countries in Earth are going to become far more likely to support policies against climate change.
I wouldn't bet on it. They have just re-elected Modi, whose record is pretty sketchy.
Modi's party lost its majority to a bunch of smaller parties, forcing him into a coalition government. The Bharatiya Janata Party is sixty seats off its 303 seat peak in 2019, in a year when Modi himself predicted a 370 seat landslide in his favor.
That said, the coalition is still largely composed of business-focused neoliberals and religious fascists. I suspect we're more likely to see Modi pivot to direct military conflict with his Muslim neighbors in an effort to shore up his nationalist base. Also isn't helpful that Indian social media is awash in "China rigged our elections!" conspiracy theories, as tensions of the border escalate again. It doesn't look like they'll be overly invested in climate change mitigation when they're building up their military and cranking up their fuel consumption.
I've read a book about this once. It didn't end well for the Indians. Nor the Chinese.
Most of their population is living hand to mouth.
I don't think they care slightest about climate change.
There is no consensus on the actual size of India’s middle class. Using the classification of those spending between US$2–10 per capita per day, over 600 million people — half of India’s population — were in the middle class in 2012, up from less than 300 million or 27 per cent of the population in 2000. Nearly 75 per cent of the middle class is comprised of the lower middle class — those spending US$2–4 per capita per day, a figure that’s only slightly above the global poverty line.
If using a higher income band — where a person is considered middle class if their daily income is approximately US$17–100 — 432 million Indians can be included in the middle class as of 2021, comprising 31 per cent of the population, up from 14 per cent in 2005.
These are people who are able to care about more than subsistence. Not "middle class" in a western sense, but secure enough in their own community to be able to push their politicians to do something about them not dying of heatwaves.
I'm pretty sure people will care when it's literally killing them.