NEW DELHI: Most years, Ms Urvasi Kumari, a landowner in the Himalayan valley of Dehradun, would finish sowing her rice fields by mid-July.
This year, the sowing of fine basmati and other grains was delayed by two weeks because rain was scanty.
'Now, my fear is that low water supply will affect the yield. Besides, even if the rains pick up, we may have to harvest early because the cold season will start by the end of October,' she told The Straits Times.
Across India, farmers are hoarding diesel for irrigation pump-sets. Jewellery merchants who bought gold at high prices are now worried about losses in anticipation that weddings may be less ostentatious this year.
Unease over poor rainfall is turning into a mild panic in India as the life-giving monsoons play truant, raising the prospects of a drought just as the economy is emerging from the impact of the global slump and its own cyclical downturn.
The Indian government has ordered the civil service head of every state to turn up for a meeting in the national capital today. The day-long meeting will discuss the rain situation, the rising prices of vegetables and essential commodities, as well as an action plan to tackle the looming drought.
'The overall price situation, including that for pulses and sugar, is very serious,' Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar told Parliament this week. 'If the rains in August and September turn out to be normal, then the price situation may improve.'
Those prospects look less likely by the day.
India's resurgent stock markets swooned on Thursday as the Meteorological Department published data showing that rains were two-thirds below normal over the seven days to Aug 5. This followed the driest June in more than 80 years, although the monsoon recovered somewhat in the following month.
'Rainfall was excess or normal in 11, and deficient or scanty in 25 out of 36 meteorological sub-divisions,' the Met office said. Overall monsoon deficiency, it added, was 25 per cent.
The annual south-west monsoon, the main source of moisture for the country, typically crosses the southern Indian coastline around June 1. It then works its way northwards up the peninsula before spreading eastwards. It retreats by the end of September.
The monsoons are critical to the Indian economy because only about 42 per cent of the area with major crops has the benefit of irrigation.
Although farm output now accounts for just 18 per cent of the national economic pie - half of what it was 30 years ago - agriculture and allied activity account for about two-thirds of total employment.
For that reason, a failed monsoon can translate into instant misery for millions of Indians and revive the spectre of food shortages.
With the rising Indian economy's thirst for foreign-made goods and the increasing number of Indians travelling the world, retail and tourist businesses from Singapore to South Africa could feel the impact of inadequate rains in India.
'If rainfall fails to improve more significantly, we fear a supply shock and a drop in agricultural output,' UBS economist Philip Wyatt said in a note to clients this week. 'Even a re-run of the 2002-2003 drought is now something we must consider.'
Mr Wyatt's current projection is that the Indian economy will expand 7 per cent in the year to March 2010. That forecast, he suggested, may be at risk if the monsoon stays weak.
A poor monsoon is also bad news for incumbent governments, both at the state and federal levels. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government benefited from normal rains throughout his first term, no doubt helping him retain power in the national elections held this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment