Tirthankar Roy - Monsoon Economies: Indias History in a Changing Climate

History for a Sustainable Future

Michael Egan, series editor

Derek Wall, The Commons in History: Culture, Conflict, and Ecology

Frank Uek tter, The Greenest Nation? A New History of German Environmentalism

Brett Bennett, Plantations and Protected Areas: A Global History of Forest Management

Diana K. Davis, The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge

Dolly Jrgensen, Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging

Fran ois Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux, The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age

Tirthankar Roy, Monsoon Economies: Indias History in a Changing Climate

INDIAS HISTORY IN A CHANGING CLIMATE

TIRTHANKAR ROY

THE MIT PRESSCAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTSLONDON, ENGLAND

2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments on drafts of this book. The generous work of academic experts is essential for establishing the authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of these otherwise uncredited readers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Roy, Tirthankar, author.

Title: Monsoon economies : Indias history in a changing climate / Tirthankar Roy.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2022. | Series: History for a sustainable future | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021033921 | ISBN 9780262543583 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Environmental policyIndia. | IndiaEconomic policy1991 | IndiaEconomic policyEnvironmental aspects.

Classification: LCC HC440.E5 R69 2022 | DDC 338.954dc23

LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2021033921

d_r0

The world is like the impression left by the telling of a story.

Yoga-V si ha, 2.3.11

There is a certain banality to the now-commonplace assertion that the contemporary moment is one riven by extremes. The historian Eric Hobsbawm identified the short twentieth century, from 1914 to 1991, as the age of extremes: a period of great creation and destruction, of massive social progress and repression, of rapid economic growth and collapse. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine the kind of moment of clarity that could spark a global retreat from this psychosis or build an ark seaworthy enough to withstand this storm of progress. We continue to inhabit a world of extremes.

True hunger for extremity is rare, argues the writer and translator Laura Marris in a short and lovely essay on extremes. Most animals that can temporarily survive in an extreme environment would prefer a less stressful one. Extremophiliathat hunger or love of extremesis rare, in spite of Northern/Western academic fascination with extreme environments from the relative mundanity of climate-controlled offices. Human societies do not seek out extremes, but history says that they have frequently found ways to endure them. Beyond extremophilia, Marris continues, there is a second category: organisms that dont love extremes but manage to be exceptionally resilient. Tirthankar Roys Monsoon Economiesoffers an economic and geographic accounting of Indian resilience, through a region that is hotter, wetter, and drier than most places, and the historical challenges associated with navigating these very wet and very dry seasons on a warming planet. Indeed, the extreme heat experienced across much of the Indian subcontinent exacerbates the transitions between wet and dry seasons: heavy rainfallso important for agriculture and survivalevaporates quickly, posing problems for its sustained use after the rains stop.