It’s a cruel paradox—India’s cities are drowning in water while its fields are starved of timely rainfall. After a weak June, the question is whether July’s rains can rescue a kharif season that began on uncertain footing. Delayed and uneven rainfall has slowed paddy transplantation, reduced the area under major crops and revived fears over food inflation. Hope generated by last week’s improvement in rainfall is belied by the weather office’s latest estimate of below-normal precipitation in parts of the country in the next two weeks.
The agriculture ministry’s data shows that by July 5, kharif sowing was 91.95 lakh hectares less than last year. Paddy acreage was 9.06 percent lower, but the setback extended well beyond rice. Pulses declined by 10.34 lakh hectares, coarse cereals by 11.75 lakh hectares, oilseeds by a whopping 42.96 lakh hectares and cotton by 18.82 lakh hectares. The erratic monsoon has disrupted the entire kharif cycle.
The answer does not lie solely in the amount of rain, because rice cultivation follows a different timetable from most crops. Seedlings must first be raised in nurseries before being transplanted on fields with enough stored moisture. Short bursts of heavy rain cannot replace steady showers spread over weeks. What farmers need is not spectacular downpours but well-distributed rainfall. There window for recovery for the season is narrow because most sowing is completed during July.
The Centre began contingency-planning in April, reaching 80 lakh farmers through 1.24 lakh Khet Bachao Abhiyan programmes, maintaining a seed reserve of 1.75 lakh quintals, expanding Kisan Credit Card approvals and promoting short-duration crops such as maize, bajra and moong where conditions permit. Officially, the rainfall deficit has improved from 40 percent in June to 15.2 percent, and the number of deficient districts has fallen from 262 to 178. But overall, reservoir levels are still below normal storage.
Even so, there is no room for complacency. El Niño has often weakened the monsoon and pushed up food prices. If sowing is delayed beyond mid-July, the next rabi season could also be affected. Record rice stocks may help avoid an immediate shortage, but they cannot fully protect consumers from higher prices of pulses and edible oils; neither can they help ease farmers’ income shortfalls. July, therefore, offers India its only chance to make up for lost time before today’s setback turns into a larger economic challenge tomorrow.