The southwest monsoon has had a sputtering start despite an onset three days ahead of schedule. All-India rainfall during June 1-19 has been 8 per cent below the normal average for this period. Moreover, even the regions covered by the monsoon have seen skewed precipitation. Rainfall has been 22 per cent deficient in South Peninsular India, while it is 50-134 per cent in excess in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Sikkim and north Bengal. Floods and landslides at one end, and largely localised rains due to weak monsoon winds at the other, has meant that sowing of kharif crops (excluding sugarcane) is down 16 per cent over last year’s acreage at this time. That could make policymakers a tad nervous, especially given elevated food prices. Most projections of inflation and real GDP growth, including by the Reserve Bank of India, have been predicated on the assumption of a normal monsoon.
But these are early days. Rainfall deficiency has already reduced from 32 per cent till June 15. Kharif plantings usually pick up only after mid-June and peak in July. Also, current water levels in major reservoirs are 4.9 per cent higher than a year ago and 32.9 per cent above the last 10 years’ average for this time. A slow start — the monsoon season extends from June to September, with nearly 62 per cent of the rainfall received during the two middle months — can even be a blessing. It gives additional time for the government and farm input companies to plan movement and placement of seeds, fertilisers and crop protection chemicals. This may matter more in today’s situation, where the Russia-Ukraine war and China’s Covid lockdowns have caused supply disruptions and delays in imports, including of fertilisers and agro-chemical intermediates. For now, all indicators — from La Niña to sustained high summer temperatures conducive for formation of a low-pressure system — point to a normal monsoon. Better late than never, as the saying goes.
That said, the monsoon’s increasing unpredictability — not just delays and breaks, but also fewer rainy days and more extreme precipitation — is cause for concern. Take last year, when surplus rains in June led to brisk sowings. But this was followed by a long dry spell from the second week of July to the third week of August and, then, excess rainfall in the subsequent five months till January. The kharif crop, then, suffered both moisture stress during the vegetative growth stage and inundation at harvesting time. That, along with the hit to wheat yields from the sudden rise in temperatures after mid-March, was the clearest evidence of the challenges posed by climate change: To policymakers, breeders and, of course, farmers.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on June 20, 2022, under the title, ‘A sputtering start’.
