The fields are full but the paddy brown and wilted, and the air thick with the stench of rotting crops and livestock — the aftermath of record monsoon rains that have devastated India’s breadbasket.

In Punjab, often dubbed the country’s granary, the damage is unprecedented: floods have swallowed farmlands almost the size of London and New York City combined.

India’s agriculture minister said in a recent visit to the state that “the crops have been destroyed and ruined”, and Punjab’s chief minister called the deluge “one of the worst flood disasters in decades”.

Old-timers agree.

“The last time we saw such an all-consuming flood was in 1988,” said 70-year-old Balkar Singh in the village of Shehzada, 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of the holy Sikh city of Amritsar.

The gushing waters ha

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