India Drought: Bihar State Bans Daytime Cooking

With sizzling temperatures claiming more than 300 lives this
month in India, officials have banned daytime cooking in
some parts of the drought-stricken country in a bid to
prevent accidental fires that have killed nearly 80 more
people.

"We call this the fire season in Bihar," Vyas, a state disaster
management official who goes by one name, said. "Strong,
westerly winds stoke fires which spread easily and cause
great damage."



The eastern state of Bihar this week took the
unprecedented step of forbidding any cooking between 9am
and 6pm, after accidental fires exacerbated by dry, hot and
windy weather swept through shantytowns and thatched-
roof houses in villages and killed 79 people.
People were instead told to cook at night.

Among those who died were 10 children and five adults
killed in a fire sparked during a Hindu prayer ceremony in
Bihar's Aurangabad district last week.

Hoping to prevent more fires, officials have also banned the
burning of spent crops and religious fire rituals. Anyone
defying the ban risks up to two years in jail, the Times of
India reported.

Many politicians decried the move, according to the paper.
"[The] government should instead focus on increasing the
number of fire tenders and repairing those which are not
functional," said opposition politician Sanjay Mayukh, a
member of the right-wing Indian People's Party (BJP).

Danish Rizwan, a spokesperson for the centre-right Indian
People's Front (HAM), said that "the main reason behind
massive fire in rural areas is that huts have rooftops of
straw", urging the government to provide them with
alternative housing rather than ban cooking in the day
hours.
Much of India is reeling under a weeks-long heat wave and
severe drought conditions that have decimated crops, killed
livestock and affected at least 330 million Indians - many of
them left without enough water for their daily needs.

Rivers, lakes and dams have dried up in parts of the
western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and overall
officials say that groundwater reservoirs are at just 22
percent capacity.

In some areas, the situation is so bad the government has
sent tankers of water for emergency relief. Monsoon rains
are still weeks away, expected to start only in June.

At least 300 people have died of heat-related illness this
month, including 110 in the state of Orissa, 137 in
Telangana and another 45 in Andhra Pradesh where
temperatures since the start of April have been hovering
around 44C.

That is about 4-5C hotter than normal for April, according to
state meteorological official YK Reddy. He predicted the
situation would only get worse in May, traditionally the
hottest month in India.

Huge numbers of farmers have migrated to nearby cities
and towns in search of manual labour, often leaving elderly
and young relatives behind in parched villages.

This week, more than 150 leading Indian economists, rights
activists and academics expressed their "collective anxiety
about the enormous suffering of the rural poor" in an open
letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The letter says the official response to the crisis has been
"sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion,"
and urges Modi to restore funding for a government
programme guaranteeing 100 days of paid work a year for
the poor and unemployed.

This is the second consecutive year southern India has
suffered from a deadly heat wave, after about 2,500 people
died in scorching temperatures last year.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies