A delayed monsoon, an emerging El Nino and the long shadow of India’s Great Famine

The year was 1876. Monsoon failed, crops withered and one of the deadliest famines in Indian history began to unfold. Over the next two years, the Great Famine linked to a powerful El Nino event claimed an estimated 55 lakh to 82 lakh lives across the country. Nearly 150 years later, as scientists watch another potentially strong El Nino take shape in the Pacific, memories of that catastrophe are resurfacing as a reminder of how deeply shifts in the climate system can reshape life on land.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast a 10% deficit in southwest monsoon rainfall from the Long Period Average this year. Monsoon is expected to reach Telangana by June 10. According to the IMD, ENSO-neutral conditions in the equatorial Pacific are transitioning towards El Nino conditions. The Monsoon Mission Climate Forecast System (MMCFS) also suggests the likely development of El Nino during the southwest monsoon season.

Some climatologists, unconstrained by bureaucratic controls, are already calling the emerging event a ‘Super El Nino’ phenomenon. While the World Meteorological Organisation does not use that term, it has noted that “although some uncertainty remains about El Nino peak strength and timing, most forecast models suggest it will be at least moderate, and possibly strong”.

A delayed monsoon and forecast of below-normal rainfall have drawn comparisons with the powerful El Nino episode of 1876-78.

The event triggered widespread famine in India and left a crippling human toll. In the Nizam’s dominion, a commission set up to examine the impact of the famine and recommend relief measures estimated the death toll in the small area at 71,658. In present-day Telangana, Nagarkurnool and Nalgonda were among the worst-affected districts whereas other parts of the region did not see any impact beyond drinking water shortages.

The warning signs appeared well before the famine peaked. Monsoon began to fail in 1875, when the region received 47.6 cm of rain. It fell further to 44.4 cm in 1876. By 1877, the full impact of El Nino was evident as rainfall dropped to just 37.03 cm, or 46% of the average, making it the driest year on record.

But the famine in Nizam’s Dominion outlying districts had a cascading effect on the British-ruled Madras Presidency and Bombay Presidency. Some of the bleakest images from colonial India emerged during this period. One widely circulated photograph by Willoughby Wallace Hooper showed a skeletal man standing guard over two women and carried the haunting caption: “A man guards his family from cannibals during the 1877 Madras famine”. The Illustrated London News, too, carried images from famine-affected districts. This triggered Florence Nightingale to write to the London Mayor: “The more one hears about this famine, the more one feels that such a hideous record of human suffering and destruction the world has never seen before”.

Closer home, the ordeal was captured by social reformer Pandita Ramabai, who, in her writings, described how her family contemplated death in the forests: “It was better to go into the forest and die there than bear the disgrace of poverty among our own people. And that very night we left the house in which we were staying at Tirupati — a sacred town situated on the top of Venkatagiri — and entered into the great forest, determined to die there. Eleven days and nights — in which we subsisted on water and leaves and a handful of wild dates — were spent in great bodily and mental pain”.

But Telangana had an advantage that helped soften the blow. Numerous tanks and water bodies dotting the region acted as buffers against prolonged rainfall deficits. According to Mahdi Ali’s ‘History of the Famine’, the region had 18,089 large tanks, of which 4,924 remained in use during the famine. Of the 52,685 wells, as many as 33,851 continued to provide water. These traditional water systems helped blunt the impact of drought and even became centres for famine-relief works. The Nizam’s government explored plans to connect different tanks with two prominent rivers, the Manjira and the Godavari, to bring in more area under cultivation.

“We are likely to witness more extreme events with sudden high rainfall in certain areas and a period of drought in other areas. We have natural and anthropogenic variability but I have seen 70-80% of the causative factor is natural. Humans are contributing 20 to 30% for the variability,” said Anil Gupta of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at IIT-Kharagpur who studies variability of the monsoon using micropaleontological and sedimentary proxies.

“We have studied stalagmites in caves and lake beds to draw the conclusion that over the past 900 years, the Indian monsoon has seen abrupt changes. How this El Nino event plays out remains to be seen,” he added.