They did not.

Bhargava smiled. “A forecast. Next year, if the rains fail again, there will be fifteen thousand more child brides in this state alone. Not because of tradition. Because of thirst. Because when the well dries, a daughter becomes a bargaining chip for water.”

Bhargava laughed—until he checked the records. Every major flood year in that district, the average age of first childbirth dropped by 1.8 years. Every drought, it rose by 1.2. The neem tree, the river, the monsoon—they were not noise. They were variables.

“Publish this,” he said. “Not in a journal. In the district gazette . In the panchayat office . In the schoolbooks, if they’ll take it.”

For decades, he built models that were ridiculed. “Correlation is not causation,” his colleagues sneered. “You cannot put rain and marriage in the same regression.” Bhargava nodded, went back to his cramped office in Delhi, and kept writing. He called it the Environmental Nuptiality Index . ENI. A formula that predicted, with 87% accuracy, when a girl in a rain-fed district would become a mother, based solely on the previous season’s groundwater level.