BROKEN promises to protect the environment are resulting in climate swings that include overheated summers. And uncontrollable floods and unnaturally cold winters are just round the corner. No one knows what the eventual damage will be, but even as you are reading this report, forest fires are raging in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Though this is the acknowledged season for fires, it is a heat wave that is believed to be responsible for the intensity and destructive spread of the fires this year.

``The fires were so bad that on quite a few days, even from heights of 3,000 metres we could not see the hills in the background,'' says Sanjay Sondhi, a naturalist who only just returned from a two-week trek in the Great Himalayan National Park in Himachal Pradesh. No rain had fallen in the park for eight months.

A combination of factors was responsible for the fires that devastated Indonesia last year, some of which must be at play in India where more trees are currently being felled than ever before. The best known reasons for forest fires include logging, clearing for agriculture and the El Nino factor, a result of a major warming of the ocean waters across the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean, known as the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Just how all this actually affects floods and droughts in the Indian sub-continent is impossible for laypersons to comprehend and is the subject of unending debate among academics.

Our concern here is, however, with ordinary people whose lives are affected in traumatic ways by the incompetence of land managers. Ancient Indians believed, for instance, that the forest is the mother of the river. But, today, expensive new mines, dams and roads destroy forests even as old projects languish for lack of funds. Deforestation affects our climate and our water security. It is also the reason why exactly a month from today, floods will ravage almost all the places that are currently suffering droughts. And then, when the floods abate, the poor will have to contend with freezing winters -- all a gift of the pendulum swing of a climate machine gone wrong. Caused by the rich, the first sufferers of a degraded environment are inevitably the poor, who die of heat strokes and diseases because they cannot afford air-conditioners or, sometimes, even a simple bath or, for that matter, a glass of pure drinking water.

The heat is on in Palamau, Bihar, where new coal-mining projects are threatening vast forests. An unprecedented water crisis and a heat wave has taken over the district.

In Uttar Pradesh, a state suffering from massive deforestation, 41 people have already died of heat stroke. The frequent power failures hardly help millions who are already crippled by an acute shortage of drinking water. In Allahabad, the maximum temperature has risen to 45 degrees Celsius.

In parts of Orissa, buses have stopped plying after noon, brick kilns have been closed down on orders from district collectors. Some offices and factories begin and end work early to avoid the heat. Last summer, the heat claimed 3,000 lives. Experts suggest that in Titilagada in western Orissa temperatures may rise even higher than last year's 49.6 degrees C.

``It is all too easy to blame global warming because that allows those who exploit forests to escape the blame. Why are there no heat stroke cases in Phulbani and Koraput, where the forests are still intact?'' says Banka Behari Das, former finance minister of Orissa. Meanwhile, tar roads are melting in Ahmedabad and temperatures are soaring to 43 degrees C in parts of Kutch. In Bhuj, where rapid industrialisation is fast replacing natural scrub and grasslands, temperatures rose 21 degrees C in a span of one week. And water tables are falling dramatically.

In Saurashtra, Surat and Baroda, temperatures hover around the 42 degrees C mark (forested Gir is five degrees cooler). In Rajkot's 

Jasdan taluka, 50 villages may be forced to migrate. A barrel of water sells for just under Rs 100. People have been reported to be stealing water from farms.

Mumbai has escaped the April and May heat wave sweeping through India, largely thanks to the moderating influence of the sea. But the real test will be in October when humidity and heat combine. Each year sees Mumbai's climate worsening.

In Pune (the Arun Bhatia campaign) and Bangalore (Save Cubbon Park campaign), citizens are organised enough to prevent the wholesale destruction of their tree cover. Which is why the climate is markedly better there than in most other cities. But, according to old-timers, neither city compares with how pleasant the weather used to be. And things are getting worse.

In Bangalore, Father Cecil Saldhana says politically-connected builders are filling crucial wetlands (which help regulate micro-climate). Each year, a dozen or so people die from heat stroke in Delhi. Though no such deaths have been reported this year, thousands suffer heat/water pollution-related diarrhoea and dysentery. But satellite imagery reveals that the forest cover in the capital has recently increased by 1,000 acres. Why then is the capital heating up? Are the 3.2 million registered motor vehicles in the capital to blame?

Cars are really tiny thermal plants and they severely pollute the air in all our megalopolises. Rising city temperatures cannot be linked directly to vehicular emissions, but each car certainly contributes to the process of global warming by producing up to 130 kg of carbon dioxide with every tank of gas consumed.

`CO2, SO2, Lead - straight from your car into my head' read a poster painted by a child protesting against air pollution in Mumbai some years ago. Environmentalist-lawyer M. C. Mehta would sympathise. While agreeing that the real culprits of global warming are industrial nations, he wants to prevent cars from ruining the lives of the citizens of Delhi. The supreme court recently supported him against a multitude of government experts who had been induced to produce false reports in support of the business-as-usual brigade all these years. With help from such experts, the petroleum ministry continues to supply diesel containing five times more sulphur in India than what Europe allows. But with Indian cars having to match Euro-2 emission levels, perhaps car manufacturers will now join environmentalists in demanding cleaner fuel from refineries.

With the level of private suffering assuming epidemic proportions and the connection between a degraded environment and the falling standards of living fast becoming common knowledge, it is only a matter of time before environmental protection becomes an election issue. That is when the heat will really hit the fan.

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E-mail: jrc@syberwurx.com