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The Maharashtra Cabinet on Wednesday cleared a decision to include incessant rain in the category of natural calamities. This move is likely to help farmers who otherwise fail to get government aid even after suffering losses due to rain that doesn’t fall in the category of heavy rainfall.
According to an official who was present at the meeting, the state government has fixed 65-mm rainfall in a 24-hour period as the criterion to declare natural calamity under ‘heavy rainfall’ category. It has also added Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as an extra criterion to compensate for crop loss.
On November 29 last year, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had directed to form a committee to fix the definition of incessant rain, and to fix the criterion to help farmers suffering due to it. As per the report, the ‘trigger’ of incessant rains will be applicable after fulfilling two conditions: a revenue division records minimum 10-mm rainfall for five consecutive days from July 15 to October 15, and this period records 1.5 times or more rainfall than the average rainfall of last 10 years in the same region.
After the application of the first trigger, NDVI will be checked and in case of the index being 0.5 or less, it will invoke the second trigger for incessant rain. Panchnamas of the affected areas will be undertaken and in case the crop loss is 33% or more, the farmers will be given aid.
NDVI is a simple index to monitor the state of vegetation, which can be derived from satellite data. It is used to find out vegetation response to rainfall through NDVI over the study area.
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