They say it never rains but it pours and that’s the devastating outlook in India today.
 
Cyclone Tauktae made landfall in the state of Gujarat on the north western coast of the country yesterday. Its wind speeds have topped 130mph and it’s set to snake its way up the centre of the state.
 
Anyone with one eye on the news this week won’t need telling that India was already in the grips of a crisis. The arrival of this cyclone, and the four-metre storm surge that could follow it, have piggybacked a lethal second wave of coronavirus which has killed hundreds of thousands and overwhelmed hospitals.
 
India is suffering and this natural disaster is compounding it.
 
Before the storm hit, Indians were already taking stock of prime minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and questioning his perplexing priorities in the face of disaster.
 
Many accused him of performing a vanishing act, queried his insistence to press on with billion pound parliament renovations, and were seeking explanations as to why vaccines were sent abroad. The Guardian reports a “visceral wave of public anger” at the scale of human loss.
 
One crematorium worker in the city of Panchkula told reporters “everybody is angry… whether it is the state government or the central government everybody has failed”.
 
Indians have been left at the mercy of the virus and now they’re at the mercy of the climate too.
 
Last week, the COP26 president Alok Sharma made a speech at the foot of a wind turbine in a field outside Glasgow.
 
He confirmed the UK government’s intention to press on with holding the climate conference in person and stressed it should be as inclusive as possible, given that developing countries will bear the immediate brunt of more warming.
 
COP Glasgow has been delayed once already. As with many events, there has been a temptation to delay and delay until we can hold it exactly how we’d like to. But at times like these, we need to push on with tackling the unavoidable.
 
The terrifying situation in Gujarat should remind us all of that. Not only did they have to evacuate 150,000 people but major hospitals were forced to shift covid patients receiving critical care. There is no easy option.
 
While the huge fanfare Scots had envisioned may not be possible, the risk of being too cautious may be greater than the risk of holding COP. Rolling variants could extend this pandemic by years. True. But the pandemic will (hopefully) pass. Humanity is facing more than one problem and we need to get cracking.