| The crime, the Covid, the politics and the potholes: Capital Letters — Keeping track of Delhi's week, one beat at a time, through the eyes and words of HT's reporters, with all the perspective, context and analysis you need. Good morning! The monsoon is on its way out of Delhi. Over the next few days, the national capital will have seen the back of its rainy season. And at the end of it, Delhi will be well within its rights to take some umbrage at the monsoon. For much of the past four months, Delhi has been drier and hotter than usual. It will, in all likelihood, stay this way till winter arrives, and that’s still a few weeks away, at best, and a couple of months away, at worst. September, for instance, will likely end on a much drier note. According to data from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), as of Saturday, Delhi logged 82.7mm of rain in the 24 days of September, far lower than the 123.44mm that is considered as the normal for the month. In September 2022, the Capital received 164.5mm of rain. This comes on the back of a dry August. Delhi recorded only 91.8mm of rainfall, as against the monthly normal of 233.1mm — a deficit of 61%. This year’s monsoon is also a good instance to showcase the value of context. Delhi’s monsoon rain quota is around 640mm, and it’s already received 660.8mm. So, in that sense, this was an excess monsoon – good, yes? Well, not entirely. A huge bulk of Delhi’s rain this year was concentrated in one month – July, which received 384.6mm. So, essentially, of Delhi’s four monsoon months – June, July, August and September – June, August and September combined received less than 300mm rain. And here lies the problem. Even though Delhi’s economy alone doesn’t hinge on agricultural output (most of its farms are located either in north Delhi, where the Yamuna enters the city, or peripheral neighbourhoods like Najafgarh), the city does bank on the rain’s regulating the otherwise oppressive heat and refilling its reservoirs (and indeed the Yamuna). On this count, the monsoon this year has performed below expectations.  Vipin Kumar/HT Photo This is also in tune with the larger monsoon pattern across India. In an El Nino year, rains have been patchy, irregular and have shown major regional disparities. “While there is a 6% deficiency in seasonal rainfall, the shortfall is 19% over east and northeast India; 1% over central India, and 10% over peninsular India. There is a 2% excess over northwest India,” HT’s Jayashree Nandi wrote last week. IMD has, to be sure, said that once the monsoon winds vacate the Capital, it will pave the way for lower humidity and lower temperatures. But we are all familiar with Delhi’s defining characteristic in October and November. We’ll see you soon, smog! Student polls, at long last Delhi University held its student elections on Friday, after four long years, with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad sweeping the ballot. The RSS-backed body won three of the four seats on the DU Students’ Union panel, with the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) grabbing the other. But this is not an analysis of the elections. That the elections were held is an important milestone in itself. The four-year gap has loosely been referred to as one borne by Covid-19. Yet, the pandemic itself has ceased to be a factor in our lives for nearly 20 months now (going back to the Omicron wave of December 2021-January 2022). DU was without a students’ union for four years, which meant that at least an entire undergraduate batch (of 2020), went without ever voting for its student council. Similarly, hundreds of students have no familiarity with the student election process, and with no immediate seniors to glean from, this year’s DU polls were essentially an exercise in learning from scratch.  Raj K Raj/HT Photo Unions form an important interface between the students’ body, colleges, the administration, and even the government, on occasion. To be clear, the violence that often accompanies student union election campaigns is entirely undesirable and condemnable, but that really doesn’t nullify the point of a students’ union. The DUSU polls were especially sought-after for years, and would give young leaders a platform for national politics, and many did springboard into Parliament and cabinet ministries. HT captured this history in this detailed story, which was part of the newspaper’s “DU at 100” series: “Former DUSU leaders say that national issues have always reverberated in the poll campaigns in the university’s elections. From the Emergency to the Bofors scandal, from the Mandal Commission to the sedition row in Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016 to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests in 2019, these issues have been key to the discourse during polls.” But we digress. Student elections are important for students to enter the political process at an early age, and help platform issues that are otherwise of little consequence for local leaders. Why, for instance, would anybody other than a students’ body concern themselves with the state of hostel food, attendance, fee structures, subsidised travel, and so on. Let’s hope these year’s elections, which were held largely peacefully and saw better turnouts than usual, provide the landscape for future exercises. | 
