We have heard a lot about the drought in East Africa, but India’s mon­soon sea­son just ended, and there wasn’t much rain­fall. Already food prices are soar­ing in India and econ­o­mists fear it will fur­ther undo gains made against poverty in the last 10 years.

From the Wall Street Jour­nal writer Vib­huti Agar­wal tells us the extent of India’s drought.

The drought could threaten India’s oth­er­wise robust eco­nomic growth. About half of India’s 1.2 bil­lion peo­ple depend on agri­cul­ture for their livelihood.

Many econ­o­mists fore­cast that gross domes­tic prod­uct will expand about 6% this year, but the weak mon­soon already has sent food prices sky­rock­et­ing and is expected to stoke inflation.

“The mon­soon this year has left the coun­try with the worst drought since 1972,” said Awad­hesh Kumar, the fore­cast­ing offi­cer at the Indian Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Depart­ment in New Delhi.

Among the worst-affected regions were the major rice– and cereal-growing north­ern and west­ern states of Pun­jab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Prime Min­is­ter Man­mo­han Singh said in August that the gov­ern­ment had enough food stocks to han­dle the pro­longed drought. But the drought is expected to have a severe impact on the rural poor, a focus of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, which was re-elected ear­lier this year on a plat­form of improv­ing life for ordi­nary Indians.

“The gov­ern­ment has failed to pull the poor out of the cri­sis,” said Devin­der Sharma, a food-policy ana­lyst at the Forum for Biotech­nol­ogy and Food Secu­rity based in New Delhi.

“The severe drought has pushed back the house­hold econ­omy of farm­ers in the rural areas by 10 years.”

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