A fourth of India could expe­ri­ence drought this year. The mon­soon sea­son in the coun­try has failed to pro­duce enough rain­fall for crops. Offi­cials are con­cerned about how this could effect growth in the county and that it could only deepen the impact of the global reces­sion with an increase in food prices.

From the Hin­dus­tan Times, writ­ers Gau­rav Choud­hury & Zia Haq tell us about India’s weather.

After the dri­est June in 83 years, this year’s mon­soon — which brings rain to the Indian sub­con­ti­nent between June and Sep­tem­ber — has so far fallen short by more than quar­ter of the usual amount.

The mete­o­rol­ogy depart­ment on Mon­day cut its fore­cast for the third time, say­ing mon­soon would bring only 87 per cent of the usual rains this year. The mon­soon is cru­cial for sow­ing of sum­mer crops like paddy as nearly 60 per cent of the country’s farm­land has no access to irrigation.

“A ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion has arisen due to the fail­ure of mon­soon in the coun­try. The prices of com­mon man’s food like dal are going up. The work should be done in the spirit of patri­otic duty,” a Supreme Court bench headed by Jus­tice Markandeya Katju said while hear­ing a pub­lic inter­est peti­tion on water crisis.

In Mum­bai, prices of pulses such as arhar and tur have increased 77 per cent from a year ago and 11 per cent from a month ago respectively.

Sugar now costs 35 per cent more from a year ago, while potato prices are up 89 per cent from August last year. There are signs of milk and egg prices firm­ing up as fod­der prices come under pressure.

Mukher­jee said the admin­is­tra­tion was equipped to han­dle the prob­lem. “There is no point in press­ing the panic but­ton,” he said. “This coun­try man­aged the century’s worst drought in 1987. We trans­ported drink­ing water through rail­ways. We organ­ised fod­der for the cat­tle.” In 1987, the coun­try received 29 per cent less than nor­mal rain­fall in July, affect­ing sow­ing across 6,500 vil­lages and result­ing in 7 per cent con­trac­tion in kharif crop.

The finance min­is­ter said GDP growth this year would still be more than 6 per cent — a fig­ure that might shine in com­par­i­son to economies else­where in the world, but not enough to pull mil­lions of impov­er­ished Indi­ans out of poverty.

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