How are we supposed to deal with long, dry spells as well as sudden and extreme rainfall in the same season? Or drought in one state and floods in another,for that matter? While the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition continue with their political machinations, the larger issues before the people on the ground at this point are these: climatic aberrations and consequent losses. We’d do well to smell the coffee and see the elephant in our drawing rooms.

June saw the country receiving abysmal rains, paralysing kharif sowings; central India was badly affected. There was no government in place in Maharashtra at that time. Sowings came a dud, prompting hundreds of thousands of farmers to go for a resowing because the rains failed to show up on time. Then, it started raining cats and dogs in July for long stretches without any let up, leading to floods, soil erosion and flattening everything that had just germinated.

Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh,southern Madhya Pradesh and parts of Chhattisgarh have seen massive soil erosion — topsoil washed away with heavy rains, leading to a crisis that will take years before it can be undone. If you lose topsoil, you lose much of your income for years.It’s mid-August and many parts of India have witnessed both long, dry spells and extreme to heavy rainfall, causing flash floods that washed away topsoil — over 1.5 million hectares in Maharashtra alone by preliminary estimates — and led to irreversible devastation of kharif crops.

Jharkhand, for instance, is experiencing drought. It hasn’t rained there yet and farmers growing paddy in that state are on the brink. Down south or to the west, in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, farmers have begun offering prayers for the rains to abate. Some areas haven’t seen a break from the rain for almost a month now — this is bad for agriculture and surely bad for livestock keepers.

Luckily there hasn’t been much loss of life, except in a few sporadic cases, but crop, material and property losses in central India are unprecedented,yet not reported. In Chandrapur, a district with forests and mines, several seasonal rivers are overflowing. So much so that many villages have lost contact with the nearest cities. This, they’d not seen in ages. Unchecked sand mining from river beds has played its part. Extreme rainfall events made it worse.

A young doctor who is part of a network that volunteers to provide medical services in flood- or rain-affected parts of India, put it this way: “Assam, Chittoor, Wardha, Bhandara…the list is long where flash floods caused by extreme and sudden rains have caused immense turmoil and pain to the very poor people. Assam saw floods at the end of May, which is unusual. Hunger, diseases, and loss of property and belongings have unsettled people big time.”

The national media have no time to report on this turmoil because the events happened beyond the realm of national or state capitals and the victims are not news consumers or payers.

Political parties can’t think beyond ad hoc doles because none of them comprehend more than the symbolic spheres of religion or development to deal with a challenge that is complex and calls for a layered, scientific understanding of a changing climate for a multi-pronged response.

The State’s extension systems are in tatters. People have no clue how to deal with aberrations of this intensity, both droughts and floods, especially when regulatory apparatus has long been dismantled.

On the country’s 75th Independence Day, displaying the Indian Tricolour on our social media handles is a shortcut to hallowed nationalism. Dealing with more complex and urgent issues like climate change — alas — has no shortcuts.