HYDERABAD, 5 June 2003 — Indians prayed for rain at temples and mosques as the death toll from a heat wave sweeping the country crossed 1,200 yesterday. Weather officials warned there would be no early respite, with the arrival of the southwest monsoon delayed until Sunday at the earliest and temperatures likely to hover around 47 degrees Celsius (117 Fahrenheit) over the next two days.
Most of the deaths have been in Andhra Pradesh state, where 1,209 people — mostly rickshaw pullers, street hawkers and the homeless — have died of sunstroke and dehydration. State Relief Commissioner D.C. Rosaiah said 144 people had died in the past 24 hours as the severe heat wave showed no signs of abating. He said coastal areas were the worst hit with 805 deaths in the past three weeks.
“The heat wave is unprecedented in terms of the duration but temperatures have gone beyond 48 degrees in the past,” C.V.V. Bhadram, weather office director in the state capital, Hyderabad, told Reuters.
On Tuesday, the temperature hit 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in Bolangir district in the eastern state of Orissa where authorities closed schools and colleges. Large parts of India are also critically short of water as rivers, lakes and wells have dried up due to a drought caused by last year’s failed monsoon.
Tens of thousands of people are forced to trek miles in search of wells that have not run dry or wait hours in the blistering sun for water tankers.
Authorities in the western state of Gujarat ordered an inquiry into water shortages gripping large parts of the state.
Despite the mercury soaring to record temperatures this summer most of the daily wages workers had no option but to continue doing strenuous menial jobs to support their families. “The government puts out warnings saying don’t go out, but what choice do we have? If we don’t go out and work we don’t eat,” Biksham, a 24-year old barber in Nalgonda’s Gundrepally village told AFP.
Biksham’s 58-year-old father Idikudi Ramalingam, also a barber, couldn’t find any work so last month he joined his wife and daughters to labor on a stone quarry near their village, for a daily wage of 40 rupees. “It’s easier to find jobs on the stone quarries in summer because the hotter it gets the easier the stones break,” says Biksham.
However, stone quarrying in the oppressive heat proved too heavy a labor for Ramalingam who suffered a sunstroke and collapsed and died on Friday. “We have never seen a summer like this. Every summer has a period of excessive heat but nobody remembers it ever lasting this long,” T. Venkateshwarlu, a local administrative official said.
Meanwhile, Rajasthan was among the country’s hottest states yesterday as a savage heat wave swirled through the deserts here, prompting the region to brace for its fifth-straight year of drought. The sprawling state, nestling in the Thar desert, also posted India’s highest temperatures yesterday as the mercury zoomed to 48 degrees Celsius (118.4 degree Fahrenheit) in one of its arid districts, officials said in burning Jodhpur.
The mercury was jammed at 47 degrees Celsius (116.6 Fahrenheit) for the second day yesterday in Jaisalmer district, as other parts of the state of 50.6 million people blistered without relief. The state, meanwhile, said it had already started a mammoth anti-drought program to help almost one million people who have lost their crops to the killer scorcher and opened camps to feed milch cattle.
State Relief Minister Gulab Sakatawat painted a grim picture of shrinking water supplies and said Rajasthan’s cattle stock, the backbone of the region’s economy, was also feeling the pinch from the shortages. “Due to the below average rainfall, Rajasthan’s underground (water) level has shrunk by 67 percent in the past four years and as a result as many as 200 towns and cities are receiving water twice a week after every 96 hours,” he said.
“All 32 districts have been declared drought-hit,” the relief minister added, amid reports that as many as 20 districts were reporting empty wheat bins. State public works minister C.P. Joshi, said efforts were underway to restore supplies to residents and cattle sweltering in one of India’s worst heat waves in years.
