Asia | Adapt or fry

How 1.4bn Indians are adapting to climate change

As heat, floods and drought get worse, people are getting creative

A woman is crosses a dried up lake at Boklung near Kathiatoli in Nagaon District, Assam, India
Photograph: Getty Images
|Bangalore, Mumbai and Wayanad

The flood waters were rising and Sukanya Ashin realised she had to get out of her house. Her husband tried to open the back door, but it was blocked by shifting mud. So they wrapped their two-year-old in a blanket and waded through the front doorway, as their wardrobe floated off and the houses around them started to slip down the hill. They found safety. But 17 of their neighbours died in the flood.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Adapt or fry”

From the January 4th 2025 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Asia

Illustration of national flags, including those of the US, the UK, South Korea, Japan and Australia, tucked into a crisscrossing lattice

Can Donald Trump maintain Joe Biden’s network of Asian alliances?

Discipline and creativity will help, but so will China’s actions

An alleged North Korean soldier after being captured by the Ukrainian army

What North Korea gains by sending troops to fight for Russia

Resources, technology, experience and a blood-soaked IOU


FK Arkadag's Didar Durdyev runs during a Turkmen football championship game

Is Arkadag the world’s greatest football team?

What could possibly explain the success of a club founded by Turkmenistan’s dictator


After the president’s arrest, what next for South Korea?

Some 3,000 police breached his compound. The country is dangerously divided

India’s Faustian pact with Russia is strengthening

The gamble behind $17bn of fresh deals with the Kremlin on oil and arms

AUKUS enters its fifth year. How is the pact faring?

It has weathered two big political changes. What about Donald Trump’s return?