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Floods in Punjab earlier this year killed 40 people and 7,161 livestock. The floods also damaged 14,065 houses and 193,000 hectares of cropped area as on November 27, 2025, as reported by the Government of Punjab, Nityanand Rai, Minister of State in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs told the Rajya Sabha on December 3.
The mean retreat rate of Hindu Kush Himalayan glaciers is 14.9 ± 15.1 metre/annum (m/a); which varies from 12.7 ± 13.2 m/a in the Indus, 15.5 ± 14.4 m/a in Ganga and 20.2 ± 19.7 m/a in Brahmaputra river basins (the figure after ± are the standard deviations or spread in the data). However, glaciers in the Karakoram region have shown comparatively minor length change (- 1.37 ± 22.8 m/a), Jitendra Singh, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Union Ministry of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences told the Lok Sabha.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has been providing heatwave forecasts and warnings at multiple spatial and temporal scales and shares them with the public and disaster management authorities for mitigation and preparedness. For this, IMD has developed a web-based GIS (Geographic Information System) heatwave portal, where current heatwave conditions and 5-day forecasts are displayed at the district and sub-city scales on interactive maps. IMD has also developed a Climate Hazards and Vulnerability Atlas of India for 13 major meteorological hazards, including heatwaves. This Atlas, hosted on a GIS-based web platform, provides district-level maps of hazard occurrence and vulnerability for each month and annually, and identifies hotspots with high hazard potential and higher vulnerability for heatwaves, Singh told the Lok Sabha.
The Government of Kerala has officially announced the state as the first in India to be free from extreme poverty on November 1, 2025, in a special session of the state assembly, Pralhad Joshi, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution and New and Renewable Energy told the Lok Sabha.
The proportion of Kerala’s population in multidimensional poverty declined from 0.70 per cent to 0.55 per cent between 2015-16 and 2019- 21, indicating that about 53,239 people have escaped multidimensional poverty in the state, Joshi added.
The countrywide figures for stunting, wasting and underweight in October 2022 were 39.87 per cent, 8.61 per cent and 19.38 per cent respectively. This improved to 33.54 per cent, 5.03 per cent and 14.41 per cent in October 2025. Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, the percentage of stunting, wasting and underweight in October 2022 was 52.37 per cent, 9.67 per cent and 32.99 per cent respectively. In October 2025, this has improved to 36.64 per cent, 8.45 per cent and 23.25 per cent, Savitri Thakur, Minister of State in the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development told the Rajya Sabha.
The Government of India has taken up various initiatives to address river pollution across the country through various schemes and programmes. A specific assessment to evaluate the economic impact of fish mortality and biodiversity collapse on inland fishermen and their families, and the long-term effects on fish breeding cycles and aquatic ecosystems in the Mathabhanga and Churni rivers, has not been carried out. However, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has informed that the Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute (ICAR-CIFRI), Kolkata, conducted surveys during 2005-2010 and 2024–2025 in the river Churni (95 km stretch from Shivnivas to Payradanga), which is a distributary of the Mathabhanga river. The surveys indicated that the Mathabhanga receives sugar mill effluent from the Darsana area from time to time, reducing dissolved oxygen and thereby leading to frequent fish mortality. The study also reported that fish diversity declined at locations near the confluence with the Ganga, namely, Rabonbore, Kalinarayanpur and Aranghata, Rajiv Ranjan Singh, Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying told the Rajya Sabha.