Enigmatically dry

Drought haunts India as a normal monsoon season nears end

- SHAGUN KAPIL AND AKSHIT SANGLOMA WITH PRIYA RANJAN SAHU AND JUMANA SHAH

ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2021, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) announced that the monsoon this year was well within the normal range, with a deficit of just 9 per cent. The weather agency went on to assure that by the end of September, the last month of the four-month-monsoon season, the overall rainfall will be comfortably “above normal”.

The optimistic picture painted by IMD conveniently masks the fact that farmers across 10 states and Union Territories are battling drought-like situations. Despite “normal” rains, almost 90 per cent of the districts remain drier than usual even as the Kharif (summer) crop season is underway, suggests the latest Aridity Anomaly Outlook Index released by IMD for September 2-8, 2021. The index monitors agricultural drought, a situation when rainfall and soil moisture are inadequate to support healthy crop growth till maturity, causing crop stress. The index, released week-on-week, shows the dramatic increase in the aridity levels this monsoon season. Of the 733 districts in the country, only 30 are currently nonarid (see 'Stark contrast', p14). This is much worse than the situation that existed in the week of August 19-25, when almost half of the districts were in the non-arid category.

India’s only real-time drought monitoring system, developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, also captures the alarming situation. Its Drought Early Warning System, on September 3, showed almost 28 per cent of the country was under drought.