Months of heavy monsoon rain has caused major flooding in Thailand and parts of neighbouring Vietnam and Cambodia too.
Monsoon rain levels largely determine India's crop output and are considered among the most important factors in controlling food inflation.
Wires snaked through the makeshift roof of her hut, with improvised attachments to overhead cables, lethal in the monsoon rain.
The unprecedented destruction was said to have been caused by only a day and a half of exceptionally heavy monsoon rain.
Specialists who met in February in Pune, in Maharashtra state, reported a 4.5% decline in monsoon rain in the three decades to 2009.
Wearing the signature red ties of its salespeople, Goklaney and two colleagues brave the monsoon rain to trek up six flights of stairs in a building on Malabar Hill, the city's upmarket residential area.
But its samples were collected in July, in the low season for tourism and at the start of the monsoon when rain would help to purify the water.
Two Indian states formally declared rain-deprived areas to be in drought, and Parliament is likely to take additional steps to mitigate the impact of the monsoon-rain shortage on the broader economy.
In Rolette, in north-central North Dakota, the recent monsoon-like rain submerged some farmers' crops and spread fungus among those that stayed above the surface.
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The Philippines for one is already frequently subjected to flooding and landslides caused by heavy rain, with seasonal monsoon rains in August killing at least 11 people.
Around 450m live off rain-fed agriculture, and this year's monsoon rains, which between June and September provide 80% of India's precipitation, have been the scantiest in decades.
Last year, India received less rain in the first half of the June-September monsoon season than usual, hitting western India, which has endured a two year-long dry spell, particularly hard.
Last year, India received below-normal rain in the first half of the June-September monsoon season, and while it picked up in some areas from late August, large parts of west and south India didn't benefit.
The June-September monsoon is significant for India's overall economy as most farmlands are rain-dependent and more than half of the country's workforce is employed in agriculture.
Monsoon rains are critical for India and other South Asian countries as most of the farmlands are rain-fed.
Only in the monsoon season would they construct temporary huts from pandanus leaves, repair their boats and wait out the rain.
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