For every person who dies from lightning, about nine others survive, often with life-changing injuries. And as climate change makes severe weather and lightning more frequent, activists like Daya believe the Indian government is failing to protect its people. “The bare minimum is to disseminate all information about lightning, at least at the local government level,” Daya says.
India has systems in place to forecast dangerous storms, and these systems work by collecting large amounts of accurate data, says Sanjay Srivastava, president of the Climate Resilient Observing Systems Council (CROPC), an intergovernmental body that works to develop resilience to the effects of climate change, and convener of the Campaign to Resilient India.
“Detecting the exact location of a cloud-to-ground lightning strike requires a computational mechanism that involves at least three devices,” Srivastava says. These are a radio frequency detector, which detects radio waves produced by lightning, a Doppler weather radar, which detects precipitation and wind patterns associated with storms that can produce lightning, and a lightning detector, a device designed specifically to detect the electromagnetic signals produced by lightning strikes.
As of April 2022, the National Remote Sensing Centre of India has installed 46 lightning detection sensors across the country. Another research institute, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, has installed 83 sensors. These, along with other private and institutional data, monitor and control India’s lightning warning system.
According to the data, Jharkhand and other nearby areas in eastern and central India are among the hotspots in the country as this is where hot, dry air currents from the northwest meet moist easterly winds. When clouds encounter warmer air, the moist air rises and reaches sub-zero temperatures in the upper atmosphere, where it freezes into ice particles called hail. When this collides with other ice particles, it creates static electricity that can eventually trigger lightning. Global warming has been increasing this phenomenon.
However, despite advances in meteorology, the entire mechanism behind the generation and behavior of lightning remains partially shrouded in mystery. The exact trigger, the exact nature of lightning’s propagation through the atmosphere, and the factors that determine the strength of each lightning strike have not yet been fully elucidated. The danger to human life can only be predicted quite roughly.
Although these early warning systems exist, the information often does not reach people in time, so volunteers like Shankar work to educate people on how to stay safe and teach them how to make easy-to-make lightning arresters – devices that neutralise land mines.
It was raining lightly the day Shankar visited the Manjhi family home. On the way, he came across some farmers and locals taking shelter under trees. He stopped to tell them that standing under a tree when it is raining increases the chances of being struck by lightning. But they said they had no other place to take shelter.
Lightning casualties are more prevalent in rural areas, where infrastructure is limited. Concrete homes provide protection through a Faraday cage effect, but it’s less noticeable than in urban areas, and tall vegetation that workers use to hide can also attract lightning. Densely populated areas in storm-hit areas also see more casualties. “I would say there are two factors behind lightning casualties: there are a lot of environmental factors, and then there are socio-economic factors,” says Anand Shankar, who works in the Meteorological Department at the Bihar Ministry of Earth Sciences. (Anand and Daya are not related.)
