By Asia Samachar | India |
Heavy monsoon rains and flash floods have inundated vast swaths of farmland in India’s Panjab state, threatening the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and disrupting a key part of the global rice trade.
According to Al Jazeera, Gurvinder Singh, a 47-year-old farmer from Gurdaspur, took a million-rupee ($11,000) private loan to marry off his daughter and plant three acres of high-yield pearl Basmati rice. He expected to earn nearly one million rupees per acre from this season’s harvest. Instead, his paddy fields now lie submerged under layers of floodwater and silt.
“We are ruined,” Singh said, noting that the destroyed crop had been crucial to repaying debts.
Punjab, which produces about 40% of India’s US$6 billion Basmati exports, has suffered crop damage estimated at more than 450,000 acres—and experts warn the actual figure could be up to five times higher. Across the border in Pakistan’s Punjab province, which accounts for 90 percent of that country’s Basmati output, fields are also under water.
Agricultural economist Lakhwinder Singh told Al Jazeera that “the crop is completely spoiled, their machinery is submerged, and the farmers’ houses have washed away.” Analysts fear the losses will ripple through India’s agricultural economy and could influence food-grain trade policy, with warnings against lowering tariffs or increasing grain imports in response.
As farmers like Gurvinder Singh face the prospect of “restarting from scratch,” the floods highlight the growing vulnerability of South Asia’s vital rice sector to climate-driven extreme weather.
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