Opinion Express View: Tracking the monsoon

The coming week is crucial for the southwest monsoon, which is showing signs of revival after a premature arrival followed by a prolonged lull. The monsoon set in over Kerala on May 24, eight days before its normal date of June 1, technically marking the start of the four-month season. It advanced over Mumbai on May 26, 16 days ahead of schedule. But it hasn’t progressed thereafter, with its northern limit — the imaginary boundary where the rains have reached — stuck since May 29. It has created an unusual situation of May recording not only almost 2.1 times the historical normal rainfall, but also 1.5 degrees Celsius below average maximum temperatures for the month at all-India level. With a relatively cool and wet May not forming the required heat-induced low-pressure areas, which act as a suction mechanism drawing in moisture-laden winds from the Indian Ocean, the monsoon has weakened after the initial burst.

Rainfall this month has so far been 31 per cent below normal, with 30 out of the country’s 36 meteorological subdivisions registering deficits in excess of 15 per cent. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) sees the monsoon progress and touch Gujarat, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar in the next couple of days. Its forecast of an “above-normal” monsoon is predicated upon there being no El Niño this time and neutral or weak negative Indian Ocean Dipole conditions developing during the season. Both ocean indicators known to influence the monsoon are favourable, just as the southwesterly wind system bringing the rains has been well in place. To what extent the lack of heat lows, due to unseasonal summer showers in May disrupting the normal heating pattern over the Indian landmass, would offset these favourable oceanic and atmospheric wind factors remains to be seen. One only hopes the monsoon revives soon enough for farmers to sow the kharif crops, whose fate depends on the quantum as well as temporal and spatial distribution of rainfall during the season.

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On the positive side, annual consumer food price inflation, at below 1 per cent in May, has fallen to a 43-month-low, primarily on the back of a bumper rabi (winter-spring) crop. Government wheat stocks, at 38 million tonnes on June 1, are at a four-year high, and more than four times the necessary levels for rice. The US Department of Agriculture has projected record global grain and oilseed harvests for 2025-26. These should help keep a lid on inflation in the event of the monsoon not quite conforming to the IMD’s forecast. The one lesson policymakers may have drawn from climate and geopolitical shocks in recent times is to not take commodity prices for granted. The Narendra Modi government would do well to keep the window wide open for imports.