India, Sept. 28 -- The temporary shelter in Wadalbal, Solapur district, is eerily silent. Six days of merciless floods had finally eased, and just as the villagers planned to return home, Saturday's forecast turned hope into despair - heavy rain through September 30.

Pravin Ghaderao, 32, had water up to the roof in his kuchcha house next to his sugarcane field. "My home is full of mud. Jowar, rice and wheat stored in plastic trunks is rotting, as is the sugarcane in my fields. And there is no electricity in our village."

Ghaderao is one among more than 5,000 people from over a dozen villages in the district, sheltering in schools and dharamshalas for a week, owing to relentless rains in Solapur district, and many other parts of the stat...