DEVELOPMENT: India Braces for Scanty Monsoons, Poor Harvests

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 12 2003 (IPS) - After enjoying more than decade of ‘normal’ monsoons, the weather forecaster’s prediction of a wayward monsoon in India this July has sent farmers and business people into a tizzy.

Monsoon predictions are considered to be of strategic importance in this country, which is so dependent on its annual date with the phenomenon that the matter has to be cleared at the topmost political levels.

Yet, R R Kelkar, chief of the Indian Meteorological Department and a normally cautious man, chose to forecast a 60 percent probability of less than normal rainfall. ”Parts of the country could suffer drought because there is massive variation in distribution,” he said in an early forecast made last month.

Worst of all, Kelkar had no good news for eight of the 28 Indian states that were hit by drought last year – but most especially the western desert state of Rajasthan, which is facing its fourth drought year in succession.

Rajasthan’s Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has already presented a grim report to the central government asking for massive aid, saying that the state faces the ”worst drought in 100 years” with an estimated 41,000 villages affected.

Gehlot has asked for 750,000 tonnes of foodgrain but has so far received barely 250,000 tonnes due to the lack of railway wagons to move the grain.

Several states have been complaining of food shortages and their combined demand is now placed at 16 million metric tonnes, against which they have received 8 million metric tonnes, according to official releases.

According to Sharad Yadav, India’s minister for food and civil supplies, the grain had to be given free of cost because the coffers of all the states were empty and they were not lifting central stock even at highly subsidised rates.

Yadav said states tended to ”exaggerate” their needs and the central government had to weigh each request carefully before grants of grain and funds are released.

The issue has also turned into a political one, after the opposition Congress party president Sonia Gandhi alleged in Parliament that states ruled by her party – such as Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh – are being discriminated against. Both states face provincial elections this year.

The central government has ongoing drought relief programmes for an estimated quarter million Indians in the affected states, but these are considered to be grossly inadequate. Already, there are reports of serious drinking water shortages as summer progresses.

According to the official Economic Survey for the 2002-2003 fiscal year, such has been the impact of the drought that the food subsidy bill was predicted to rise by a massive 20.3 percent to reach four billion dollars.

The droughts come at a time when India is showing signs of finally being able to overcome its dependence on the monsoons.

"If you look at data over a large period, the Indian vulnerability to monsoon has dropped,” says Rajendra Vaidya, professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in the western city of Mumbai.

But the extent of the drought last year followed by untimely rains in November led to low agricultural output this year, Vaidya said.

This year, the droughts have finally reached India’s relatively pampered urban folk, including the national capital where state Chief Minister Sheila Dixit has ordered stiff fines for people caught washing their cars with running water from garden hoses.

In the southern Indian metropolis of Chennai, the state government has reported that the reservoirs have run down to 40 percent of capacity and demanded 10 million dollars from the central government to sort out the city’s water shortage problems.

Mumbai, capital of western Maharashtra state and considered India’s business capital, has ordered a 10 percent cut in water supplies and water riots have broken out in several parts of the sprawling metropolis.

According to the Maharashtra government, half of the state’s 43,000 villages are at present being supplied water through tankers.

On Apr. 19, battles over scarce water between groups in Bhopal, capital of central Madhya Pradesh state, led to the death of one person and injuries to several people. Of the 336 cities and towns in the state, 135 do not have daily water supply.

Leading non-government organisations (NGOs) have blamed the situation on the central government’s refusal to take simple but practical steps to drought-proof the country such as by encouraging rainwater harvesting.

The non-government Centre for Science and the Environment has also been carrying on a campaign against profligate water use by Delhi’s urban rich.

Eklavya Prasad, coordinator for CSE, says that the average Delhi family uses 1,600 litres of water daily – 700 for bathing, 420 litres for washing clothes, 160 litres for flushing toilets, 120 litres for watering plants and 200 litres for washing cars.

It is largely the result of CSE’s campaign that the state government banned the washing of cars with hoses and announced that building plans would not be approved unless they also had a water-harvesting component.

With tubewells rapidly lowering groundwater levels, the Delhi government has also moved to install metres on private facilities to mine out water that have been installed in nearly every home in affluent areas.

Such measures may be too little too late this year and unless the monsoon proves the weather forecaster wrong, India is in for an unusually dry spell.