When a whole society depends on one seasonal event, a delay in that event becomes a political danger. A late or failed monsoon can bring down governments, spark revolts and push up violent crime as people suffer through the heat. Losing forests and adding pollution make such failures more likely.
People who have lived with a pattern of weather all their lives can read it by instinct. Villagers' sense of when the monsoon would come was sometimes more reliable than the weather offices in the big cities. Knowledge gathered from many ordinary people can rival or outdo central expertise.
A weather system covering a whole subcontinent can still keep to a calendar. The monsoon arrives as two wet arms, one from the east and one from the west, and they meet over the middle of the country on a date that can be predicted to within about a week. Something huge and chaotic in its details can still be regular in its overall shape.
While everyone waits anxiously for something they cannot control, the person who claims to predict it gains outsized status and attention. When the rain finally comes, the built-up tension breaks into celebration, looser behaviour and a rash of scandals.
A season everyone depends on can become a moment when a people take stock of who they are. During the monsoon, Indians living abroad come home to join its festivals, and the rain takes on an almost religious weight. A natural event that shapes daily life becomes a shared ritual that binds a scattered community.