What started as a dismal monsoon has since gone from bad to worse. It reached the subcontinent a few days late and its progress northwards thereafter was anything but vigorous. By the end of June, large swathes of the country had received hardly any rain and the nationwide rainfall deficit soared to 29 per cent. Even at that stage, however, there was a chance that the monsoon could recover and turn into a “below normal” one, a category that the India Meteorological Department (IMD) defines as a season with nationwide rainfall between 90 per cent and 96 per cent of the long-term average. Indeed, the department’s probabilistic forecast issued in late June put the chances of the monsoon ending up in this category at twice the climatological probability (which is based on the outcome of past years). But, in addition, the rainfall record for over a century showed that the monsoon might slip below the 90 per cent mark and end up as a drought. In other words, at the end of June, the odds clearly favoured a monsoon with seasonal rainfall below 96 per cent, with the possibility of a drought. What, one wonders, compelled the IMD to declare in its updated June forecast that the monsoon was “most likely” to be in the “normal” category with rainfall between 96 per cent and 104 per cent?
Poor rains in July have made a recovery improbable and the IMD’s latest forecast shows that the monsoon will most likely end as a drought. Over half the country has still received too little rain. With a substantial part of the country’s agriculture dependent on those rains, the drought has taken a toll on kharif crops such as rice, coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds. An immediate priority for governments both at the centre and in the States must be to protect livelihoods, especially in rural areas, and prevent food scarcity and soaring prices from taking hold. Fortunately, the government is holding stocks of tens of millions of tonnes of rice and wheat. Strangely, just last month, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the export of two million tonnes of wheat from its stocks on the grounds of inadequate storage space. Those buffer stocks will now come in handy and must be deployed judiciously. This will be the fourth drought in the space of 11 years and it will not be the last, particularly since the monsoon is in a low rainfall phase. Greater resilience must, therefore, become an integral part of planning for the future and coping with a changing climate. Water will have to be seen as a critical resource for the common good that must be carefully conserved and rationally used by all. It is not going to be easy to make those sorts of changes, but it must be done.
Keywords: Deficient monsoon, nationwide rainfall deficit, India Meteorological Department, southwest monsoon
India is a large country facing every year drought on one side
and floods on the other side. This is happening every year and
the Rulers and politicians know this very well. Crores of Rupees
are being spent for drought on one side and for flood relief on
another side every year. Corruption also plays an important role
here. That is why Congressmen are not in agreement to link the
National rivers of our country as planned and decided by the only
Statesman Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Otherwise the
immature politician Rahul would not have talked against the
decision of linking of rivers as decided already by NDA Govt.
This plan is now dropped by UPA Government for obvious reasons.
When the NDA Govt comes back to power in 2014 they should take up
this project very earnestly and seriously once again and carry
out the same so that the flooded waters are not wasted and used
to help the drought affected areas.
The updated June forecast by the IMD which in a way served as a guiding factor for the government to approve the export of 2 million tonnes of wheat will hit India hard. Though the government cannot be put to blame for this comportion, one thing which the government can do is to accelerate the approval of 51% in FDI in retail. This, as we all know will lead to the development of infrastructure for storing food grains so that extra inventory can now be maintained in case of a crisis like the one which India is facing now.
This is the time of last hour for the plantation of RICE in most part of our country and till the begening of august overall more than 19% rain defecit have been recorded. In India more tahn 60% of population rely on agriculture which contribute around 14 % of our GDP but the curse of agriculture is it is based on rain not on irrigation system. This is very difficult situatin for the formers. GOVT. should properly review the situaion and take action.
In UK, when there was a drought declaration, residences were banned from using hose pipe to clean thier cars.
India can put in some bans to cut down on excess usage for few months. We can educate people to be careful when opening thier taps.
Erratic Monsoon has been a trend since the beginning of this century
, almost every alternate year we are seeing a drought , and overall
monsoon has been weakened,
we call India as a agriculture based economy and most of our fields
are rain fed. and we have no other sustainable alternative for
irrigation purposes other than looking at clouds of southwest monsoon
, There has been a drastic changes in the water table , and our aquifers are not recharged too. innocent farmers even after paying
for high priced diesel(which government plan to hike as well) tube-
wells for fetching water to their fields get a handful of mire only ,
and are forced TO TAKE LOANS ULTIMATELY LEADING TO SUICIDE ,
Government should put thyself in the chappals (since farmers can't
afford to have a shoe) and then plan for policy , Their policy should
be seen from the eyes of our food makers.
Why can't we predict the monsoon status already? What is the purpose of our satellites every year we launch lot of satellites for agriculture. Anyway no changes would happen.
The new Union Finance Minster faces tough challenges as a result of drought in many parts of the country. Till now we have refused to accept that henceforth monsoon will always be erratic and either below or above normal in most parts of the country. For citizens the worrying factor is high food inflation as a result of drought and possible fall in output of wheat rice and pulses.
But let us also note other possibilities. (1) Corporate tax revenues as also Central excise duty collections are likely to be badly affected by slowdown in economy. (2) There is little hope that burden of subsidies on diesel, kerosene and LPG would be reduced in coming months. (3) This means there is little hope of reining the fiscal deficit. (4) India’s GDP growth arte will be badly impacted in next two years.
more than 69% of Indian farming is rely on the South west monsoon. As we faced many worse droughts in 1987, 2002, 2007, 2009 and now we are the brink of worsen monsoon then why our we are not framinig the policies of watershed management, water conservation as an imperative to our farimg.In some states we are affecting with deluge and in the same country we are facing the worse drought. great Irony!!!
This is right time to policy makers to make strategy according to climate change otherwise its big mistake from our generation and leads to suffer next generation.
There is cloud burst and torrential and uninterrupted rain at Uttarkhant.Assam is under
threat of overflowing water.North East as a whole is under the grip of immenent
flood.Odisha and West Bengal have moderate rains.Statistics say that only 10 percent of
rain water is used for drinking and irrigation and 90 percent go to sea as waste.Water use
in general is luxurious and no value was given to this precious resource in India at
least.War over water was predicted much ago.The interstate water/ river disputes are never
solved.Carrying capacity of our dams is not scientifically assessed as storage capacity of
silos on grains.Dr Rao's committee recommendation on inter river connectivity is still in cold
storage.Tachnology for conversion of saline and brackish water into drinkable water is
available and in use in Island countries and Middle east.Long term planning and timely
execution are essential for water.Water policy may be taken out of cold storage.Otherwise
vultures only will exist
This situation will contributes to raise vegitables, groceris and pulses rates indscrimatary manner certainly impacts on huge middle class families resides urban areas. Always inflation impacts on middle calss families compare to poor and rich class as they manages sitatuion. Middle calss families lone source of income is their earnings and have doesn’t have the supplementary or secordary source of income put them in herculean situation to manage uncontrolled situation with restricted and defined income. For poors government will support through PDS systems and their childerns studying governemtn schools and consults government hospitals for their healthcare and utilizes all available government schemes to takecare their families. Government should work on controlling food prices in the market in coming days keeping in the view of large number of middle calss families.
If you realize and concede that the effect of drought on availability of water for man's use and for agriculture, we can come up with a solution instead of crying horse over monsoon failures. We get more rain than many other countries, but unfortunately we let the rain water lost as surface run off. Over 90% of the rainfall is thus lost to human use. The run off is caused by a subsurface hard pan which prevents the rainwater from percolating down in the soil profile and build up the water table so that water can be used during drought. Therefore, breaking the hard pan mechanically in crop lands as part of soil preparation work before planting a crop should be popularized. A mechanical tool called 'Chisel' is available with farm equipment companies. Why our agriculture scientists are not testing and reinventing this method used in developed countries for decades is a puzzle. If we can reduce rain water run off by 10 to 15 percent, we we need not unduly depend on monsoons each year.
It looks to me that the monsoon predictions by the IMD are mostly
based upon rain fall averages of the previous years rather than on any
scientific observation of changing weather pattern. They had always
come up with scientific explanations for the variations later. In our
country, monsoon failure is a natural cyclic phenomenon and the people
should be ready to meet that kind of contingency. As the editorial
suggests, conservation of water and food grains by the people is very
important to tide over the difficult drought situations. But the
existing facts speak otherwise. Food grain storage system in India is
primitive. Colossal quantities of grains are lost every year to the
rodents, not to speak of the damp conditions inside the Go-downs
turning sizable quantities fungus ridden to render them unfit for
human consumption. We can follow the 'Grain-Elevator System' as
practised in the US and other western countries, modelling them to our
requirements, to avoid wastage of food grains.
The lessons learned from the 2009 drought could be the guiding factor
to prevent a repeat in loss of agriculture production.
The lessons learned from the past when there were problems to face the
drought must serve as guiding factor for preparedness to help the
farmers to overcome the vagaries of weather.
The country cannot afford to lose more farmers when the demand for
food production is pretty high to feed millions of citizens.
As many small farmers in the country depend on rainfall during the
farm operations, they have to be educated adequately on the ‘dos’ and
‘don’ts’ during the occurrence of drought, based on value addition to
weather data.
Their helplessness was evident during 2009 when some farmers in
drought affected areas were not guided properly about the seed
materials, sowing operations and alternate approaches.
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