Last week, I wrote about how anyone who is serious about ending – or more realistically, significantly reducing – intimate partner violence in India must look at the inherent cultural and legally-protected problems within the institution of marriage before any other concern. This is true, in the sense that any other intervention will not be as immediately relevant or effective for the majority of people. However, long-lasting change is always concurrent. In that light, there is an even larger issue: climate change. Activists dedicated to ecological welfare sometimes say that climate change is the only real issue. It is the ultimate issue, no doubt: all else that concerns us as human beings will literally be wiped away should the climate apocalypse that we are already in reach its peak.

But that apocalypse is gradual: like frogs in boiling water, collectively speaking we have been oblivious. By the time enough awareness arrives, it will be too late. We would literally have boiled to death. This is not a change of subject at all: the crisis of rising planetary temperatures is linked to the rise of gender violence in South Asia.

            A 2023 study by the American Medical Association journal JAMA Psychiatry, specifically tracking cases in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, found that every 1°C increase in temperature appears to bring with it a 4.5% increase in intimate partner violence. The situation is notably worse in India than in other countries studied. Here, that 1°C rise is correlated with an 8% increase in physical violence and a 7.3% increase in sexual violence against women. Even if one is cynical about climate change, the statistics on violence against women themselves speak for themselves, indicating an issue that even if isolated or unrelated is a serious one.

            The reason why higher temperatures and more domestic violence are linked is believed to be stress on daily wage earners, specifically stress from reduced incomes and other factors during heatwaves.

Nothing tells you that the results of this study have more to do with gender than with class than the fact that it is women who are largely impacted by such stress-related violence. The working class is made up of people of all genders; unlike higher economic stratas, the luxury of “choosing” not to work to significantly contribute toward the running of a household, however difficult the job, doesn’t exist there. Women wage earners are not the ones becoming physical violent from stress – at least, not in notable numbers. This stress affects them not just equally, but even more.

Anything that indicates an increase in violence among people in lower economic stratas, or any sector of society that faces prejudice, will be used to justify other stereotypes – and to deflect internal questioning. But whether one is inside an air-conditioned building or not, if the planet is burning up, one may just be among the last to catch fire – but will go down in flames, anyway. When it comes to climate change, this is almost literal. At every level of society, the normalisation of violence by men is a problem. At every level of society, the dismissal of climate change’s extreme danger is a problem too.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in August 2023. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.