India, June 27 -- Natural disasters, primarily extreme weather events, triggered the displacement of nearly 17.2 million worldwide in 2018. At 2.678 million, India recorded the maximum number of people displaced - that's more than double the 1.3 million displaced in 2017. About 1.5 million or nearly 54 per cent of the new displacements in India in 2018 were in Kerala, which was hit by the worst floods in a century.
Cyclones Titli and Gaja, which struck Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu respectively in October and November 2018, triggered close to 649,000 displacements. These sad developments are a grim reminder of how a deteriorating environment is coming full circle and impacting us adversely.
The depth of the issue can be gauged by ...