Most villages have a bhuva who forces the gods to make it rain. And if this doesn?t work, he can always blame the local witch or dain. Once upon a time, the Met boys wouldn?t release statistics. They would put the numbers up to the minister?s office who would sit on them. There was a fanciful story in Delhi that speculators took advantage of rainfall data. In fact, the trader is quite clued in, thank you. He has a good idea of the coming crop as Dantwala?s old classic on cotton marketing showed and as was later proved by Madhu Pavasker. The only people who suffered from the secrecy were in other government offices, which didn?t have a clue to what was happening.
In the late 1990s, I persuaded the Met to periodically release their statistics as well as forecasts?before and during the monsoon. At first, the press was openly hostile to this data release. It constantly kept telling everybody that their forecasts and readings were wrong. But that came to an end, and tracking the rains is a great pastime now.
So, it has rained everywhere but not in the East, in the Malwa region and in eastern Madhya Pradesh. Apart from the Malwa region and Uttar Pradesh, where the deficiency is around 20%?the same as last year?it is 30-50% in the rest of the East. And the upper end is painful. This follows a deficiency of a similar amount last year. The first thing is that this will not have any appreciable macro effects. Grain stocks are brimming and the trader will not dare create trouble. Actually, contrary to popular impression and speeches from our netas, traders are not villains who beat their wives or dodge taxes more than others. Instead, traders are quick to recognise inelastic supply curves and quicker to make money from this or from futures.
Apart from grains, the larger commodity effect will probably be more than last year?s kharif. Last year, the rainfall failure of 40%-plus was in the highly irrigated zone and the zone that has the lowest level of irrigation was damaged mildly. This time, it is the other way round. India?s monsoon strikes are well-behaved stochastic processes. For all you know, god might well be a computer. The upshot is more pain but less loss of agricultural GDP.
Incidentally, all this macro stuff?highly comforting to financial analysts?hides the great setbacks to widespread growth processes and also a lot of pain for more people, given that the East is populous. One of the side effects that breaks my heart is that Krishi Bhavan had mounted a very well-thought-out plan for hybrid paddy. We were keeping our fingers crossed that the Luddites will stay out of this game instead of saying that hybrids are bad. But now that the rains have hit, consider the impact on the hybrids that have high stress characteristics in peak periods. Krishi Bhavan will, I am sure, concentrate on the irrigated areas in the East to salvage their efforts. But given the great failure of the country in not developing irrigation in the most suitable eastern region, saving the hybrids in a big way will be tough.
Growth of paddy in the Gangetic eastern region will be low this year as also in the hills and valleys from the eastern ghats through the Orissa and Madhya Pradesh hills and valley regions. Cotton will be sown less as will be more generally high-valued crops, including oilseeds. For pulses, this is a boon since filler crops will be possible with delayed rains. And the agriculture secretary has already indicated this.
There will be serious drinking water problems in the hilly areas and employment will suffer in the large population regions. Now is the time to pour money into deepening the village ponds, repairing canals and doing drainage works in a big way. In the hills and valleys, Mihir Shah should get done what he does best?from getting into watershed development to getting the National Rainfed Authority cracking. One hopes all this doesn?t remain a dream of this scribe. When will we see a picture in which the irrigated area in Chhattisgarh is more than 25%, more than 15% in Jharkhand, and more than a third in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. Money and effort we put in this year may not supply more water immediately but they will give the adivasis the feeling that we care.
?The author is a former Union minister