Bad Monsoon Is Very Bad News For All Of Us

Bad monsoon is very bad news for all of us Forget the threat of swine flu. If the Met department's worst case predictions about the shortfall in monsoon this year come true, it would be the biggest crisis facing the country in recent times. And this time, it wouldn't just be urban India's conscience getting pricked by stark images from the countryside. A drought now will hit us all in more ways than one. There are good reasons to believe so. For one, a drought will directly hit India's rural economy that has remained robust in midst of the downturn in most other sectors. That's bad news for the entire country. Especially for the government whose resources are already stretched because it's spending big on stimulating the economy even as its own tax revenues drop. If the drought is widespread -- a very likely scenario after IMD's forecast predicting a 19% shortfall in rains in north India -- farmers will need a huge bailout package. They will also need jobs through NREGA, building bunds, roads etc, for which big money will have to be raised. All this may well bring the fiscal situation to the brink. Then there's the spectre of a food crisis. The foodgrain shortages that hit India -- and the world -- in 2007 weren't entirely overcome. Though our grain output increased on the back of two good years for agriculture (2007 and 2008), food prices have kept rising since.The trend has continued through the period of the economic downturn even as prices of all other commodities have been falling. The main reason attributed to the rise of food prices was the high minimum support price (MSP) the government announced for the farmers. But the demand on food remained high, which also explains the why prices of all food produce have risen.Now imagine the impact on food prices if the farmers of Punjab, Haryana and west UP have a bad kharif crop. Even though our buffer stocks are adequate at the moment, the effects of a poor rice output would be felt far and wide. As for fruits and vegetables, the dry month of June has already led to a sharp jump in prices.There are other reasons to be worried about. As climate change takes effect, natural disasters will tend to have a magnified toll. With each passing year, the impact of events such as droughts is likely to get more severe, and its footprint wider. That's because the pressure on natural resources is increasing and so is the dependence of the cities on water and power from sources deep in the countryside. A drop in the reservoir level in the Tehri Dam will directly hit water supply in south Delhi homes and add to the city's power woes. Delhi, for instance, is already in the midst of a water and power crisis. That's why there's a crying need for a national environment and resource management body that cuts across ministries and plans out how our precious natural resources are to be conserved and used. Our very future depends on such planning. But that's a subject for another day.For the moment, it seems, this summer's going to be long and hard for city folk across north India. Needless to say, it'll be even worse for people in the countryside. The country received 45% less than normal rain in June

An uncertain monsoon With the monsoon having revived after a nearly two-week hiatus, the worry about an inordinate hold-up in crop planting has faded — but only partly. The met office is still unsure of its further advance to the vast, largely raindependent agricultural lands in central India, notably the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, where even some drinking water sources have dried up because of deficient monsoon rainfall last year. The 45 per cent shortfall in rainfall in the first half of June has resulted in a further dip in the water level in several reservoirs that were drawn down during the intense summer. Normally, the monsoon should have covered almost the whole country, barring the north-west, by June 20. But this year, after a reassuring beginning with its onset in Kerala on May 26, about a week ahead of schedule, its further progress got stalled from June 7 in the wake of the Aila cyclone in West Bengal. This cooled down the Bay of Bengal, preventing the development of any atmospheric trough that could pull the monsoon northwards into the country’s interiors. There has, thus, been a delay of nearly 10 days in the arrival of the monsoon in Maharashtra, Orissa and north Andhra Pradesh, and of at least a week in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. This should not cause too much concern, provided the weather reverts to normal. The country’s key north-western agricultural belt gets monsoon showers only by the end of June. In any case, this region has a well-developed infrastructure for irrigation and does not rely entirely on the rains for seeding crops.

The bigger worry about this year’s monsoon has to do with the emerging signs, however faint, of an El Nino (the name given locally to the warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean). Often, though not always, this has an adverse influence on the monsoon’s performance. The met office would not have known of this when computing its longrange monsoon prediction in April, which had said that total rainfall would be near normal, at 96 per cent of the long-period average of 89 cm for the season as a whole. But this should not dim hopes at this stage because the El Nino is still in its infancy and there is yet no certainty about what shape it will take in the next three months. There have been occasions when monsoon rainfall has remained normal despite the existence of a full-blown El Nino. Two more risks remain, as in any year — a protracted break in the rains during the monsoon season and an early withdrawal of the monsoon. These are riskier for crop production than a delayed beginning, whose effect can be mitigated by opting for shorter-duration crops. If there are weather aberrations later in the season, there is little scope of salvaging standing crops and the investments made in them. Still, the watchword at this point has to be cautious optimism with regard to the monsoon and kharif prospects. Worries over farm production The monsoon that has been erratic so far this year is also likely to take a toll on agriculture production in the country, which in turn is likely to affect overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a basic measure of country's economic performance. According to the latest estimates of the IMD, cumulative seasonal rainfall during this year's monsoon has so far been 43 percent below the long-term average. Out of 36 meteorological sub-divisions, rainfall was excess or normal in seven and deficient or scanty in 29 meteorological sub-divisions. India receives 75 percent of its annual rainfall during the southwest monsoon, between June and September. Thus, this period is crucial for India's food production, as 60 percent of the country's farms depend on rain. As per the government's third advance estimates, rice production during this year's rabi season, or the spring harvest, was likely to see a drop of 0.9 percent over the previous year. Last year, rice production was up 2.8 percent at 99.37 million tonnes. In the case of wheat, too, production during agriculture year 2008-09 (July to June) is expected to have been lower by 1.2 percent at 77.63 million tonnes, against 78.63 million tonnes. The overall production for the fiscal is estimated at 229.85 million tonnes, which is a marginal improvement of 1.97 million tonnes over last year, but lower than the target of 233 million tonnes set for the year. According to RMSI, a company specialised in analysing and quantifying climate- and weather-related risks worldwide, the delay in monsoon and long spell of dry breaks could cut India's rice output by up to 38 percent in major growing regions. The bad monsoon so far has increased concerns in the industry for it will also affect the raw material supplies to agro-based industries. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) has predicted the farm output this year to fall by 3.8 percent because of erratic monsoon rains.