All about India

Although India is prone to droughts in the sowing seasons, flooding occurs commonly during the harvesting seasons. However, due to increasing global warming and unpredictable weather patterns in recent years, flooding in India has affected not only those involved in agriculture but the majority that live in rural areas. As flooding strikes without warning, little preparatory work can be done in an attempt to lessen the possible damage done. In these areas where poverty is rife, flooding causes the destruction of homes, leading to congested emergency shelters where bad sanitation is common. Due to the poor sanitation and the presence of large water bodies, water borne diseases such as malaria spread quickly among people in rural areas. Although relief workers help to alleviate the situation by providing free medical care, the diseases are not exterminated quickly and tend to spread over large areas. Worsened by the lack of affordable healthcare, rural areas commonly have high death rates. Also, flooding causes surface run-off and soil erosion, contributing to the water pollution of India. To learn more about water pollution in India, click here. To see how flooding intensifies poor sanitation due to the spread of water-borne diseases, click here. To learn more about how flooding affects rural poverty in India, click here.