When the Met forecast was 96% of the Long Period Average (LPA) with a variation of 5%?, we asked you not to worry but cautioned that in some fortnights and some regions(the MET has 36 such agro met zones) there could be problems around this average. So, when it did not rain in the first fortnight we thought it was this variation, but now the MET has changed the game by estimating that life is more difficult this monsoon, for their best bet now is 93% of the LPA with a variation of 5%?. Still, let?s not get into an overdrive. This is not 2002/03 when the actual rainfall was 81% of the LPA.93% minus 4% is 89%, which is closer to 2004/05 when the actual rainfall was 87% of the LPA. In 2004/05 the growth of agricultural GDP was zero percent, which is not great news but since agriculture is now less than a quarter of GDP, the economy that year still grew at 8%. Rainfall failures cause misery but the effect on growth is less than that of the global slowdown and decline in exports and FDI. In fact India is no longer an economy which is a gamble on the monsoons. In the last three decades we have had our share of droughts but low growth years have been very few. Before the mid seventies, in five years GDP would grow by two to eight percent in the remaining five decline upto five percent. We crossed that hump in the post Hindu growth rate story.
But in the regions and periods the rains fail, many persons and families are affected. Employment goes down. There are drinking water problems. This is going to happen this year. Seed requirements will go up as crops wither away. Inspite of some hardy optimists holding forth in Delhi, the loss on delay in sowing and to an extent in arable area has already taken place. Planted crops in the rainfed regions which did not get rain will give less yield. Marginally less, but less all the same. In some regions the story will be worse. In 2004/05 thirteen out of the thirty six agro met regions had scanty and deficient rainfall. Now there the MET has actually given good news. For according to them, it is the North West which will be worse off getting only 81% of its LPA. Now that is terrible, but Punjab, Harayana and Western UP are highly irrigated. I know the Bhakra Reservoirs are almost empty. But they are so in good years also just before the monsoon. In March 2008, both Gobind Sagar and Pong had very low levels even by March end. So when the rainfall begins, the Himalayan rivers fill them up. Hydel production will be less but assured irrigation at a certain level will come and then the kisan will use ground water. I know in the North West when ground water falls to fifty feet it is a ?drought?.We will of course go through the routine of asking the CACP to work out the additional cost of pumped water and the Finance Ministry will only sanction a part of the Kisans burden, but that?s all old hat. Remember, in many parts of India temple bells ring in joy if water is found at fifty feet. According to the Met these regions will get 93% to 101% of the LPA. I must say though that at the regional levels the statistical accuracy of the MET?s long term forecast work is less reliable.
In a year of the 2004/05 kind we can lose as compared to the average, around ten to twelve million tonnes of grain from a good year. There is a big hue and cry to scuttle the Food Security plans. This is wrong. Food security is much too serious a business to put in a stop go mode. The Congress President has done well to highlight a point we have been making in this column and made in a meeting on food security taken by Sharad Pawar and Montek Ahluwalia that the programme should be targeted to the sections of the population she has emphasised and we had also identified from the hunger map of India. It is important to go ahead with these. There is clearly enough grain for this. What we have to resist is the tendency of Ministries to featherbed their budgets with moneys loaded from these priorities.
Finally there is the documented lesson of the 1987 drought. Plan the works and expenditures. Otherwise as Sainath says, with expenditures in programmes leaking like a sieve, everyone loves a drought.
?The author is a former Union minister and former vice-chancellor, JNU