NEW DELHI: Despite the rapid economic advance of recent years, much of India still lives and dies under an elementary force of nature: The annual monsoon that sweeps up along the southwestern coast and loops back down to the sea, greening fields in its path, washing away the huts of the poor and clogging the streets of the rich.

Over the last week, the fury of nature and the frailty of Indian infrastructure once more came into sharp relief, as the death toll from just five days of rain exceeded 160 and thousands of people across five southern and western states were displaced.

Neighboring Pakistan fared even worse. Heavy rains swept from the Arabian Sea, bringing the country's most populous city, Karachi, to a standstill, killing 200 people and displacing thousands. The Pakistan Meteorological Department warned of a cyclone approaching Karachi from the south, with winds gusting at up to more than 130 kilometers per hour, or 80 miles per hour.

Over the weekend, rains lashed Mumbai, splashing the front pages of the nation's newspapers with pictures of people slogging through its water-logged streets. Two years ago, flash floods in Mumbai killed more than 1,000 people, prompting the city to promise swift repairs to its ill-equipped drains.

What makes the rains in India particularly ferocious is not just the volume of water they bring but how fast and furiously they come. India gets on average 122 centimeters, or 48 inches, of rain each year, but 80 percent of it comes in roughly 100 hours, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.