India, May 26 -- If there is one thing which has not lost its importance in the Indian subcontinent for decades, it is the monsoon. Technically speaking, the monsoon is just a wind pattern which develops in the Indian Ocean and advances into the subcontinent. But when read with the fact that it brings 70% of the rainfall in India and provides for almost all of the country's agriculture and drinking water requirements, it is clearly a prerequisite for sustaining what is the world's most populous region. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) declared that the 2025 monsoon arrived in Kerala - the first point of its landfall in mainland India - on May 24, making it the fifth-earliest monsoon arrival year in 55 years. Once again, the monsoon's arrival being declared is nothing but a bunch of meteorological criteria being fulfilled. What does an early monsoon mean apart from a relief from the summer season? An HT analysis of IMD data published on Sunday shows that an early monsoon is not exactly a rare event and 23 out of 55 years since 1971 have seen a monsoon arrival before the designated date of June 1. The analysis also found that while an early monsoon reduced the probability of a rainfall deficit in the state of Kerala, the correlation isn't particularly strong at the all-India level. To be sure, the monsoon arriving in Kerala and progressing in the rest of the country are different things, and the latter can deviate from the normal course for a variety of reasons. It is the latter which is becoming more and more important as the climate crisis deepens and both the inter-temporal and spatial variation in the monsoon performance increases despite headline rainfall numbers - which is what goes into declaring the season's rainfall as normal or deficient - being normal. Skewed rainfall patterns are increasingly causing damage to crop as well as leading to disasters such as flooding and landslides. This is why it is important to take up steps not just to mitigate the climate crisis - a country can only do so much towards ensuring this - but also try and "monsoon-proof" our drinking water, drainage and farming needs. This would require working on our weather and rain forecast systems - which are far from satisfactory at the moment - and build infrastructure to deal with the increasingly volatile rains. Every monsoon reminds us that we're underprepared on this front. Will 2025 be different?...