When the Sky Opens Up, It's Our Earth That Fails: Rethinking the Monsoon Disasters We Keep Blaming on Nature
When the Sky Opens Up, It's Our Earth That Fails: Rethinking the Monsoon Disasters We Keep Blaming on Nature Each year, as the monsoon returns to India, it brings with it not just the promise of life-giving water, but also a predictable torrent of destruction. Roads vanish under swollen rivers. Hills collapse into villages. Cities choke in waterlogged chaos. As visuals of this annual catastrophe dominate headlines and newsfeeds, the script remains depressingly unchanged: nature has once again lashed out at humankind. But behind this familiar tale lies an uncomfortable truth. The monsoon itself—an ancient, vital force for this land—is not the real villain. The real damage comes from how we’ve altered the land it touches. Our ecological recklessness, relentless concretization, and brazen ignorance of terrain and climate science have transformed a seasonal rhythm into a cycle of ruin. The Monsoon Isn’t Getting Wilder—We Are Just Getting More Vulnerable At first glance, it may s...