Parts of rural northern India are currently exploding in color — not just from spring but from seasonal festivals marked by folk music, dancing, farmers in traditional dress and dishes such as sweet saffron rice.
One such festival is Vaisakhi, an important date on the Sikh calendar. Held in Punjab, it celebrates the successful growth of winter wheat and other crops including mustard, chickpeas, lentils, barley and sunflower seeds. “When the crop is fully ready for harvest, all the farmers come together to celebrate,” Ashwani Ghudda, a local social worker, told DW. “They offer prayers, visit fairs, and then prepare to begin the harvesting.”
Punjab is a historically agrarian state that currently produces about 10% of India’s wheat and 15% of its rice. “A lot of folklore and festivities have emerged from that,” said Harindar Grewal, environment adviser with the nonprofit Citizens for Change Foundation.
In eastern India, Assam’s Bohag Bihu marks the transition from the dry season to the agricultural cycle with singing, dancing and rituals focused on cattle care. Chandana Sarma, associate professor of anthropology at Cotton University in Assam, says the celebration is rooted in ancient fertility rites and serves “as a ritual calendar marker of ecological renewal where agriculture, sexuality and social reproduction are integrated.” She highlights the deep interdependence between humans, nature and subsistence systems in local communities.
This year, these harvest festivals are unfolding against a backdrop of climate-related challenges that have damaged crops in both regions. In Assam, about 20,000 acres of crops have been lost to floods and hailstorms over the past year, which the regional government has linked to hydrometeorological disasters. In Punjab, unseasonal rain and hailstorms this month have damaged wheat across more than 135,000 acres in seven districts.
Grewal says farmers can no longer rely on precipitation coming in December and January when it would aid wheat growth; if rain arrives while grain is forming or maturing, “it brings a lot of misery.” Assam, one of India’s wettest states, has also seen rising average temperatures and is vulnerable to more intense, erratic rainfall. Since 2020, 1.32 million acres of crops in the state have been damaged by floods, storms or hailstorms.
The pressure on farming systems is not only climatic. Structural issues compound vulnerability. In Punjab, the widespread rotation between wheat and rice has contributed to groundwater depletion, worsened by a policy of free electricity that encourages heavy pumping. “Punjab was never a natural area for raising paddy, unlike northeast India where you have plenty of rainfall,” Grewal noted.
Some farmers are adapting by changing crop varieties and improving irrigation, but a recent study found many struggle to adapt because of limited access to credit, land shortages and inadequate government support, which hinder wider diversification.
Authorities in Punjab have deployed teams to assess crop damage, and Assam and the central government say they have released $439 million (€405 million) to support farmers affected by climate-related disasters. Grewal says stronger institutional support could further help and give resilience to food security. Practical steps include providing shelter at local agricultural markets so farmers do not have to wait outside with trailers full of produce where sudden rain can destroy crops. For the longer term he suggests rethinking farming practices to reduce dependence on rice grown in paddy fields and diversifying into agro‑forestry and horticulture, including greenhouse farming to raise productivity while protecting long‑term soil and land sustainability.
“Punjabi farmers are enterprising, and it was this human effort that drove the Green Revolution. What is needed now is strong intent,” he said.
Even as conditions change, festivals continue to shape agricultural life. Chandana Sarma says Bohag Bihu now functions less as a direct agricultural ritual and more as a cultural framework: “The festival mediates between past agrarian lifeworlds and present mixed economies, sustaining cultural meaning even as material farming practices evolve.”
Edited by: Tamsin Walker