For Mahalakshmi R., who has been riding a bike taxi for nearly two years, every increase in fuel and food prices directly cuts into her daily earnings. What was once enough for three modest meals a day is no longer sufficient. “I earn an average of ₹700 to ₹1,000 each day, depending on the number of rides. I spend around ₹200 on fuel for my vehicle. Earlier I could manage food expenses within ₹250 a day. Now I skip meals because the prices of everything have gone up. Even idlis cost much more now,” she says, as she waits for the next ride request.

As fuel costs climb and food becomes increasingly unaffordable, fresh concerns over a possible return to large-scale work-from-home arrangements have added another layer of uncertainty for drivers like her, whose livelihoods depend entirely on people commuting to office each day.

From Chennai to the southernmost districts of Tamil Nadu, rising food prices are steadily tightening household budgets, with restaurants and eateries quietly revising menu rates upward every few weeks. The burden on the public has intensified further with hikes in fuel prices — thrice in 10 days. On Saturday (May 23), the Union government increased the prices (petrol: ₹105.31 and diesel: ₹96.98 in Chennai). This increase came after a hike of ₹3 on May 15 and 90 paise on May 19. The availability of LPG cylinders continues to remain a concern, with several consumers reporting delivery delays stretching up to two weeks in certain cases.

Takeaway troubles

From middle-class families and bachelors to hostel students and information technology professionals dependent on daily takeaways, people across Tamil Nadu say the cost of putting food on the table has risen sharply, even as incomes and salaries have largely remained stagnant.

“Ever since the LPG supply crisis began, small restaurants and roadside eateries have been among the worst affected. Larger food chains with multiple outlets across the State were able to manage the situation better owing to their scale and supply networks. However, these major brands were also the first to increase food prices and reduce portion sizes. Smaller eateries have followed suit only in the past two weeks,” said a food consultant.

In Triplicane, a Chennai neighbourhood with a large number of men’s mansions housing job seekers and migrant workers, residents say their daily food expenses have increased by ₹50 to ₹125 in recent weeks. Many who moved to the city in search of employment say affordable food was one of the reasons they chose to stay in mansions despite their cramped living conditions. “We stay in mansions because it helps us cut down on room rent and manage our expenses better. But eating has now become more expensive than lodging,” said Rajavel, a resident of a mansion in the locality. Men living in mansions across the State face the same crisis.

Young professionals and Gen Z employees working in the IT sector say rising travel and food expenses are beginning to strain their monthly budgets. Archana, a software professional employed at a small IT firm along Chennai’s Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), said recent workplace changes added to her financial burden. “After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement encouraging work-from-home, our company reduced its employee transport services and asked the staff members to arrange commute on their own. Now, I must bear my daily travel expenses too,” she said. According to industry experts, the State has over 10 lakh people working in the IT sector, including many from other States.

Silent surge

A cooking oil industry source said that in the past few days, the prices of cooking oils, including palm and sunflower oils, had gone up by ₹15 a litre. Amid rumours that excise duty on cooking oil imports would be increased, there has been panic buying and hoarding. “Since countries that mainly supply cooking oil to India, including Malaysia and Indonesia, have diverted their excess stocks to make biodiesel, the nation’s supplies too are likely to be hit. They too want to conserve foreign exchange by not buying crude oil. If crude prices go down, the price of palm oil too will go down,” he said. Besides homes, palm oil is mainly used in the hotel industry for cooking and making snacks.

Salem Shevapet Maligai and Shop Varthaga Nala Sangam president S.C. Natarajan said that owing to favourable seasonal rainfall, the prices of most grocery items remained stable, with only a few commodities witnessing an increase of ₹5 to ₹10 a kg. Compared with March this year, the price of ‘toor dal’ has increased from ₹125 to ₹130 a kg, while Bengal gram has risen from ₹85 to ₹90 a kg. The price of roasted gram has also gone up from ₹90 to ₹100 per kg, he added.

Firewood cost rising too

Hotels that shifted from LPG to firewood are now grappling with rising firewood cost too. With demand for ‘seemai karuvelam’ (Prosopis juliflora) increasing sharply, the prices have risen from ₹6,000 to ₹13,000 per tonne, Madurai-based wholesale trader A. Karthikeyan said, adding that his customer base had grown from 50 to 70 since the gas shortage began.

Peanut hulls, another alternative biofuel widely used by sweet shops in the region, have also become costlier following the LPG price hike. Known for generating the intense heat required for continuous boiling of sugar syrup, the fuel is commonly used in sweet-making units. M. Kannagaraj, a sweet shop owner in Madurai, said the price of a 30-kg gunny bag of peanut hulls had risen from ₹240 to ₹280. He feared the price might increase further if LPG rates continued to rise.

Rising prices of essential commodities, LPG, and fuel have been affecting the operations of parotta shops in Tiruchi’s Edamalaipatti Pudur area. Shops that once started preparing parottas from early afternoon have begun staggering cooking schedules to optimise the use of gas cylinders and firewood stoves. Residents say the impact is already visible in food prices. “Not long ago, a parotta cost ₹10. It rose to ₹15 earlier this year and now sells for ₹25. Today, buying six parottas costs more than the gravy that accompanies them,” said a resident of Edamalaipatti Pudur.

Cloud kitchens, which rely heavily on app-based food orders, are also facing mounting pressure amid the rising operational cost and shrinking profit margins. Tiruchi alone has nearly 250 cloud kitchens, and several of them are reportedly on the verge of shutting down, according to S. Sundaresan, district secretary of the Tiruchi Hotel Association. “Subscription-based meal services have been among the worst hit by the price rise because we cannot increase rates after customers have already paid their monthly fee. At best, we may have to reduce the number of deliveries or impose a surcharge on future subscriptions,” said S. Siva of Mukkani Tiruchi, a fresh-cut fruits and salads subscription service. Several women, particularly those running cloud kitchens and subscription-based food services across the State, fear that the continuing rise in the fuel and raw material costs could severely affect their already modest monthly savings and threaten the sustainability of their businesses.

Delivery workers in trouble

Food and e-commerce delivery workers say the steady rise in fuel prices is pushing them deeper into financial stress, even as their earnings remain stagnant. Many complain that while the cost of petrol continues to rise, companies have done little to offset the burden on gig workers. “There are far more delivery workers now than there were two years ago, but the number of bookings we receive has reduced sharply. Our incomes have remained the same while fuel expenses keep increasing,” said a delivery executive, expressing concern over the growing struggle to sustain daily expenses.

Many consumers say the new government must urgently intervene to regulate soaring food prices, accusing sections of the hotel industry of increasing rates at the slightest excuse while rarely reducing them when commodity prices fall. “Hotel associations are always quick to cite rising costs and hike prices, but when market prices come down, customers never see any reduction on their bills. The common man is being squeezed from all sides. Someone must step in and control these arbitrary price hikes,” they said.

Supplies stretched

An expert on LPG said that only 60%-70% of the requirement was at present bottled at the plants owing to the reduction in supplies. “There were times when bottling plants worked to fill up 120% of bookings and distributors still had backlogs. At present, the oil marketing companies (OMCs) seem to be stretching whatever supplies of LPG they have. In urban areas, though booking is allowed after 25 days as opposed to 45 days in rural areas, it takes nearly 40 days for the cylinder to reach the customer. It is the same with rural consumers.”

Distributors say they get only one load of bottles where two are needed. OMCs have been saying they have enough stock and there is no need to panic, but they are not permitting new 14.2-kg domestic connections because diversions happen rampantly. “This is mostly done by the delivery boys with the connivance of a few distributors,” said an oil industry source.

(With inputs from Sabari M. in Salem and Namakkal; Nahla Nainar and Ancy Donal Madonna in Tiruchi; P.V. Srividya in Krishnagiri and Hosur; S.P. Saravanan in Erode; Beulah Rose in Madurai; and Deepa Ramakrishnan in Chennai.)

Homes are surrounded by floodwaters in Sohbat Pur city, a district of Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province
| Photo Credit: Zahid Hussain

Disaster events are not only becoming more frequent and severe but their impact is also expected to worsen. The year 2023 brought an end to the warmest decade on record, marked by unprecedented extreme weather events and large-scale disasters. These catastrophes were worsened by ongoing conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization titled ‘The Impact of Disaster on Agriculture and Food Security’ found that the frequency of extreme disaster events has risen significantly over the past 50 years. The 1970s saw approximately 100 disaster events per year. In the last 20 years, that number went up to about 400, globally (Chart 1). 

Chart 1 | The chart shows the number of disasters by EM-DAT (the international disaster database) grouping and total economic losses in $ billion.

Chart appears incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode

According to the EM-DAT database of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 2022 witnessed nearly 31,000 deaths and an estimated $223.8 billion in economic losses from disasters, affecting over 185 million people. 

Agricultural activities and livelihoods rely heavily on environmental conditions, natural resources, and ecosystems. Globally, the agriculture sector faces growing threats from hazards such as flooding, water scarcity, drought, diminishing agricultural yields, fisheries depletion, loss of biodiversity, and environmental degradation. For instance, in Pakistan, exceptional monsoon rainfalls in 2022 led to nearly $4 billion in damages to the agricultural sector. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated over $21.4 billion in crop and rangeland losses in 2022, with drought and wildfires responsible for most of the crop losses.

Data from 88 Post-Disaster Needs Assessment surveys conducted from 2007 to 2022 in 60 countries indicated that agricultural losses constituted an average of 23% of the overall impact of disasters across all sectors. However, the available data are limited, primarily focusing on low-income countries and major extreme events. A comprehensive global estimate of economic losses across all sectors is unavailable.

PDNAs revealed that more than 65% of losses attributed to drought affected the agricultural sector, while floods, storms, cyclones, and volcanic activities each accounted for roughly 20% (Chart 2). 

Chart 2 | The chart shows the share of loss in agriculture by hazard type. 

However, data on loss and damage are not systematically collected or reported. To address this gap, the report used secondary data sources such as EM-DAT and FAOSTAT production data to quantify the impact of disasters on agriculture, with a specific focus on crop and livestock production. Findings indicated that estimated losses in these sub-sectors have been gradually increasing over the past three decades. 

The total loss from extreme events over the past 31 years amounted to approximately $3.8 trillion, averaging about $123 billion per year. 

Click to subscribe to our Data newsletter

Losses across major crop and livestock product groups exhibited increasing trends (Chart 3). Over the past three decades, estimated losses in cereals averaged 69 million tonnes annually. Losses in fruits and vegetables, along with sugar crops, averaged 40 million tonnes each annually. Meats, dairy products, and eggs experienced an estimated loss of 16 million tonnes per year. 

Chart 3 | The chart shows the estimated loss in various product groups (in million tonnes) between 1991 and 2021.

The distribution of total losses across regions from 1991 to 2021 also reflected the geographic size of each region. Asia bore the largest share of economic losses (45%), while Africa, Europe, and the Americas displayed similar orders of magnitude. Oceania experienced the lowest total losses (Chart 4).

Chart 4 | The chart shows the distribution of the total estimated $3.8 trillion losses by region (1991-2021).

In absolute terms, high-income countries, lower-middle-income countries, and upper-middle-income countries reported higher losses, while low-income countries and Small Island Developing States experienced lower levels. However, when considering losses relative to agricultural value added, low-income countries suffered losses more than double those of upper-middle-income countries on average (Chart 5).

Chart 5 | The chart shows total agricultural losses as a share of agricultural GDP by country groups (1991-2021).

Source: FAO report titled “The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security 2023”

Also read |Data | Over 50,000 hectares of forest land in Uttarakhand diverted for various projects in last 30 years

Listen to our podcast | Is the Environmental Performance Index really faulty?

There has been a series of disruptive weather and climate phenomena in India this year, demonstrating the complexity of our precipitation system.

There was the Western disturbance, which usually brings much-needed moisture from European seas to the western Himalaya and parts of northern India in the winter and spring. But this year, the Western disturbance lived up to its name and remained active late into the summer, snapping at the heels of the southwest monsoon.

An El Niño phase

The widespread destruction of infrastructure and loss of life due to landslides and flooding in the western Himalaya and northern India raised concerns about the sustainability and resilience of our development projects in the mountains and floodplains. Between July 5 and July 20, the affected area was estimated to be between 2,124 and 7,362 sq. km. The population affected was potentially more than 25 lakh.

Climate-linked warming is likely to weaken winter precipitation from the Western disturbance and shift it to more intense rain events. If this happens later into the summer, its consequences will be of great concern.

Soon after this came evidence that an El Niño phase of the quasi-periodic El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – a phenomenon in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean – was intensifying and likely to affect the southwest monsoon.

Not all El Niño events have adverse effects on the southwest monsoon because the latter is driven by many ocean-atmosphere-land processes. But the relationship between the two entities has been changing over time. When an El Niño affects the southwest monsoon, another ocean-atmosphere phenomenon in the Indian Ocean – called the positive-phase Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) – could balance the consequences.

Dynamic regression models have suggested that 65% of the inter-annual variability of the southwest monsoon, over many decades, can be attributed to the combined effects of ENSO and the IOD.

El Niño and food security

Agriculture depends on two types of water. Green water is rain-fed soil moisture tapped by food and cash crops, eventually transpiring into the atmosphere. Blue water is the water in rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and groundwater, which is the basis for irrigation in agriculture, apart from drinking and industry use supply, and to maintain ecological flows in rivers. 

The El Niño and other climate phenomena affect rainfed agriculture in many ways, from delaying the start of rains, and affecting sowing, to hot temperatures that may negatively influence plant growth and soil moisture.  

Despite investments in dams, reservoirs, and irrigation systems, around half of the cultivated area in India depends on green water, not blue water. Our daily diet in India – from cooking oil to diverse foods – also requires 3,268 litres of water per person per day on average, subject to regional variability. Some 75% of this footprint is green water, demonstrating the importance of rainfed agriculture to our food and nutritional security.

Even in irrigated areas, many dominant crops require green water to different extents. For example, in kharif season, rice paddy under irrigation uses green water to the tune of 35%. Many staple crops like tur dal, soybean, groundnut, and maize also rely considerably on green water at this time. In the 2015-2016 El Niño year, soybean production in India declined by 28% from the 2013-2022 average.

We have just emerged from one of the warmest and driest Augusts in many decades, and hope that the IOD or other phenomena will help reduce the impact of the El Niño on India’s agriculture, farmers, food security, food inflation, and conflicts over water-sharing between States.

El Niño and the northeast monsoon

At the end of the southwest monsoon, the blue water stock in our reservoirs and groundwater will partially determine the fate of the rabi crops sown in winter and the overall water security. Contributions of green water from the northeast monsoon in southeast India and the Western disturbance in the north will play significant roles as well.

Studies have found that 43% of heavy rainfall events in the northeast monsoon (including the 2015 Chennai floods that caused widespread devastation) coincided with an El Niño. We will be closely watching the rabi crops in 2024, which bank heavily on blue water or irrigation during the summer months, along with our overall water security.

Consider Central India’s highlands, encompassing 36 districts in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra, which are emerging as climate change hotspots critical for our water, food and ecological security. It includes 17 urban centres with populations over a lakh and the headwaters for five of India’s 10 major river basins. The basin precipitation ranges from 699 mm in the west to 1,380 mm in the east, with an average of 987 mm per annum.

This region experiences significant and perennial water stress, driven largely by rabi irrigation with blue water. As a result, some 70-78% of the landscape experiences water stress for four or more months in a year.

Of the 17 urban centres, 11 face water stress for six to eight months, with Nagpur enduring water stress for the longest duration.

Persistent uncertainties

The amount of monsoon precipitation has been declining since the 1950s, attributed by some climate scientists to the reduction in land-sea thermal gradient, in turn due to warming of the seas. However, indications of increased frequency of intense rain events and greater heat and moisture stress for people and ecosystems align with predictions of warming’s impact on the atmosphere’s water-holding capacity and acceleration of the hydrological cycle. These events increasingly interact with hydrologically incompatible land-use and built infrastructure, resulting in high exposure and vulnerability to disasters.

Global climate models and their regional equivalents have failed to simulate these observed trends in precipitation, increasing the uncertainty in future projections. However, climate modellers are trying hard to improve the models. Given the persistent uncertainties, we should base our adaptation plans on the idea that current trends will continue: more-frequent intense rain, summer heat and moisture stress, and declining monsoon precipitation in some parts of the country. It is possible that as warming continues, total rainfall in parts of India may increase but the share of extreme rain events may go up. When this tipping point will transpire is uncertain.

Attributing specific extreme rain events to climate change or natural dynamics in our complex climate systems, or both, is challenging for climate scientists. But mounting evidence suggests that a warming atmosphere is amplifying many natural dynamics within our complex climate systems.

How we respond

In terms of agriculture and food security, there is now an emphasis on reducing dependence on water-intensive crops, with millets being the crops of choice. Shifting to less water-intensive crops may reduce vulnerability of our food systems to phenomena like El Niño. One estimate suggests that more than 30% of blue water savings from such shifts, with some gains in protein and micronutrients but a slight reduction in calories. However, water saved in this manner may not necessarily help recharge our depleted aquifers or restore ecological flows in our rivers: new demands for the saved water quickly emerge unless appropriate policies are in place.

There are several adaptations and alternative crop strategies available now, thanks to the work of our farmers and agricultural scientists. They include shifting to millets and alternative varieties of dominant cereals and advisories to farmers to switch to crops with shorter growing cycles. The government, both at the Centre and in States, along with farmers, now benefit from forecasts of phenomena like El Niño and their impact on the monsoon and improvements in short-term weather forecasts and early warning systems for both intense rain and dry spells.

Based on decades of experience, it is clear that alternative short-term and long-term management of our dams and reservoirs is required to reduce the risk of dam-based flood disasters and ecological damage to aquatic ecosystems. 

How we respond as a society and in terms of governance to the water and climate change crisis, which links food, water, and ecological security through diversifying our agro-food systems, a lower dependence on blue water, rejuvenating our rivers, and sustainable water-sharing between humans and nature will to a great extent determine the well-being of 1.4 billion people.

Jagdish Krishnaswamy is dean, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru. The author acknowledges Kiran M.C., Geospatial Lab, IIHS for his contribution to this article.

Midday Meal workers burn copies of Union Budget 2023-24 during their protest, in Kolkata, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023.
| Photo Credit: PTI

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella organisation of more than 300 farmers’ outfits and the Right to Food Campaign, a platform for activists working on food and nutritional security, termed the Budget as an attack on farmers and the poor. They said in separate statements that the allocations for the agriculture sector and food subsidy had been reduced considerably in the Budget, presented in the Parliament on Wednesday.

The SKM, expressing shock and bewilderment at the Union Budget, said it had expected the Centre to appreciate the importance of the farm sector with the need to secure income and future of the rural farming community. “Instead, the Union Budget 2023 is the most anti-farmer Budget in the history of the nation,” they said.

The Budget was silent on doubling farmers’ income, the SKM said adding that the Centre “dishonestly stopped” giving data on the income of farmers and out of the targeted increase in the income of ₹13,000, only ₹4,400 had been achieved, that is only one-third of the target, the SKM said.

The grant for PM Kisan Samman Nidhi had been reduced, they said and alleged that the number of beneficiaries had been steadily declining and now the portal had stopped displaying real-time beneficiary data. “At a time of deep economic distress, this scheme gave some relief to farmers but now even that is being constricted,” the SKM said.

Social spending reduced

The Right to Food Campaign said it was shocked to see that the Budget reduced the government spending on the social sector to a huge extent. “The negative impact of the economic crisis that began even before the pandemic, has fallen disproportionately on those at the bottom of the pyramid,” the platform noted. The activists said with the discontinuation of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) from January 1, 2023, the ration entitlement of the people was halved.

“Women and children of the country have once again been ignored even when they have been most affected by the pandemic and the continued economic severity. The allocations for Samarthya (including maternity entitlements), and PM POSHAN (mid-day meals) have reduced considerably this year as well,” they said.

Labourers loading wheat at APMC wholesale market outskirts of Ahmedabad on May 17, 2022. 
| Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji

The Centre has amended its wheat export ban order of May 13 to allow export consignments that were registered in the Customs Department’s systems and handed over for examination on or prior to May 13 to be shipped out, the Commerce and Industry Ministry said on Tuesday.

The government also allowed shipment of a wheat consignment headed for Egypt, which was already under loading at the Kandla port, following a request by the Egyptian Government. A bulk of the 61,500 metric tonne wheat consignment had already been loaded for shipping to Egypt. The Centre has now permitted the exporter to load the remaining 17,160 metric tonnes so that the full consignment can sail out from Kandla.

Reiterating the intent behind last week’s ban order, the ministry said the decision would ensure food security and rein in inflation, while maintaining India’s reliability as a supplier as it would help other countries facing food deficits. The order also aimed to provide a clear direction to the wheat market to prevent hoarding of wheat supplies, the ministry asserted.

The export curbs notified last week came within a couple of days of the ministry’s announcement that official delegations would travel to several countries to pitch Indian wheat exports.

The curbs would not apply in cases where prior commitments had been made by private trade through Letters of Credit as well as in situations where permission is granted by the Centre following requests made by the governments of other countries to meet their food security needs.