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• A normalized entropy measure, Standardized Variability Index, is proposed. • Trend analysis shows one-third of the country experienced a significant increase. • More extreme rainfall events in the near future are anticipated. Understanding the spatiotemporal variability of rainfall is vital for water resources planning and management, flood and drought mitigation, and erosion control, among others. Despite the progress in this direction, through proposal of many different approaches and their applications to rainfall data at various regions around the world, our knowledge of the spatiotemporal variability of rainfall remains limited. Studies in this direction have largely focused on the amount of rainfall and its spatial patterns, and investigations of spatiotemporal variability at multiscale are limited. In this study, we introduce a novel measure, Standardized Variability Index (SVI), based on the concept of entropy to investigate the spatiotemporal variability of gridded rainfall in the Indian subcontinent at different timescales. The results show distinct spatial patterns in the inter-annual rainfall variability at all timescales. Also, the intra-annual variability of rainfall amount, as well as rainy days, is found to increase from east to west of India. The Mann-Kendall trend test at different timescales reveals significant increase in rainfall variability. In addition, coupling the mean annual rainfall with SVI enables a relative assessment of the water resources availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]