As the southwest monsoon enters the fag-end of the June-September season, year 2009 will go down in history as one when rains played truant for most of the four monsoon months. After making an early entry, the monsoon showed little signs of advancement. Vast swathes of prime farmland in central, northern and western parts of the country, that produce a bulk of the kharif-sown foodgrains, oilseeds, pulses and sugarcane were left untouched by rains for a major part of the season. This prompted worried state governments to declare drought in almost 300 districts as paddy sowing fell by almost 70 lakh hectares, while oilseeds went down by around 12 lakh hectares and sugarcane dropped by 1.3 lakh hectares. But of late, since August, the southwest monsoon did show some signs of revival, bringing down the season?s cumulative deficiency to around 20% from a high of around 29% and also filling up near dry reservoirs.This, experts feel, will aid rabi sowing. The number of meterological subdivisions with deficient, scanty or no rainfall have dropped from 27 to 21, while those with excess or normal rainfall have gone up from 9 to 15
The late rains could not have come at a better time for India?s premier weather forecaster India Meteorological Department (IMD) and also government agencies that were facing flak from all sides for their delayed response to patchy rains earlier. IMD for its part can now happily claim that it wasn?t way off the mark in predicting that June-September rains would be around 87% of the Long Period Average, which was a downward revision from its April forecast of ?near-normal? rains. If the momentum of rains in south and eastern India is maintained for a few more days, overall deficiency would indeed come down to below 20%. The recent rains have once again rekindled hopes that farm production in 2009 won?t be as bad as was being thought of a couple of months back, and on a net-on-net basis the impact of low rains on the total agriculture output will be well within manageable limits. Still, an improved job by IMD and prompt response from government will go a long way in lowering uncertainty. That?s the lesson for 2010.
sanjeeb.mukherjee@expressindia.com