After taking multiple economic hits in his household, Gurvinder Singh, a 47-year-old farmer in Gurdaspur, in India’s Punjab state, took a million-rupee loan ($11,000) from a private lender to marry off his eldest daughter. He saved a portion of that and used it to sow 3 acres (1.2 hectares) of paddy.He placed his bet on the high-yielding pearl variety of aromatic Basmati rice. A good sale would have given him an earning of nearly 1 million rupees per acre ($11,400 per 0.4 hectares).But now, Singh’s pearl paddy grains lie submerged in floodwater, buried under layers of soil and sediment.“I cannot afford this shocking flood at this time in my life. We are ruined,” Singh told Al Jazeera. “This year’s harvest was supposed to cover our debts. But this field is a lake now, and I don’t know how I will start again.”Singh also had to temporarily leave his home, along with his wife and two children, after the devastating floods hit their village earlier this month. “What will I go back to?” he wondered. A man walks with his belongings after being evacuated from a flooded area, following monsoon rains and rising water levels in the Sutlej River, near the Pakistan-India border, in the Kasur district of Punjab, Pakistan, August 29, 2025 [Akhtar Soomro/Reuters]‘A lasting repe …
