What if the monsoons fail in 2023?

The monsoons are critical for India. Despite spending huge sums of money on irrigation projects, only 53 per cent of country’s gross cropped area is irrigated

On April 11, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) released its first long-range forecast for the upcoming monsoon season. As per the forecast, there is a 35 per cent probability that India will receive normal monsoon rains this year.

In the same press release, the IMD points to a 51 per cent probability that the monsoon rains will be below normal or deficient. So, technically, the IMD is raising a caution about a fair possibility of below-normal rains this year. The IMD also releases a second, and hopefully more accurate and granularised monsoon forecast in June, and we will have to wait for it to make better assessments. Meanwhile, we analyse using the first forecast.

Indian monsoons

Indian monsoons are traditionally for four months: June to September. About 75 per cent of the annual rains that the country receives is during these four months. The two middle months of July and August receive the most rains (about 30 per cent each of the total monsoon rains). Over time, Indian monsoons have shrunk (the Long Period Average (LPA) has been revised downwards) and much of the rains have shifted towards the end of the season, with October receiving rather excessive rains lately.

The monsoons are critical for India. Despite spending huge sums of money on irrigation projects, only 53 per cent of country’s gross cropped area (GCA) is irrigated. Besides, India continues to grapple with huge gaps between its created-irrigation-capacity and utilised-irrigation-capacity.

Read | Monsoon forecast needs more detailing

Indian droughts

As per the IMD, when the monsoon rains as a whole fall below 10 per cent of its LPA value and affects more than 20 per cent of India’s area, it is categorised as an all-India drought year. In the last three decades, India has seen droughts in five years: 2002, 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2015. Even though the monsoon deficits in 2018 were also high, with the LPA deviation of (-) 9 per cent, the year fell short of being a drought year.

The worst drought in these 30 years was in 2009 with a deficit of about 21.8 per cent. The droughts of 2014 and 2015 were also unique as in its 113 years of rainfall history, India had witnessed consecutive droughts only three times before this: 1904/1905, 1965/1966, and 1986/1987.

El Nino And Indian droughts

El Nino is yet another example of the extent the world is interconnected. When Pacific Ocean waters (in 3.4 zone) heat-up (during months of January to September), India’s south-west monsoon weakens. When these waters cool down (successively by at least 0.5 degrees Celsius sustainably for some time), the phenomenon is referred to as La Nina, and that is associated with good Indian monsoons. The oscillation between El Nino and La Nina is referred to as ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) and it can last for anywhere between three to seven years.

The relation between El Nino and Indian monsoons is not as automatic and direct. Since 1951, there were 15 El Nino years, and India faced droughts in only nine of them. This translates to a probability of about 60 per cent of an El Nino translating into a drought for India. The last El Nino year was 2018-19, and India’s monsoon deficit was 9 per cent, about 1 per cent short of the 10-per cent drought threshold. Some of the differentiating factors in this case could be the other weather mechanisms such as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the Eurasia Snow Cover.

Like El Nino, the IOD also refers to a phenomenon of heating of ocean waters. But this time the ocean is the Indian Ocean, and unlike El Nino, heating of Indian Ocean waters is beneficial for Indian monsoons. Similarly, Eurasia’s snow cover is important for our monsoons. If the snow cover is lower, we get better rains.

The good and the bad

As per the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ENSO update of April 24), possibility of El Nino developing from May-July is 62 per cent.

The IOD, as per the Bureau of Meteorology, Government of Australia, is likely to be positive in the coming months.

Eurasia’s snow cover in January was the 9th lowest it’s ever been in the last 67 years.

So, while El Nino is likely to pull down India’s monsoons, both the IOD and the Eurasia Snow Cover should bolster it. We will have to wait to see the net result.

Domestically, two factors are favourable for the coming kharif crop this year. One, the level of water in the country’s reservoirs is quite satisfactory. As per CWC, the reservoirs are at 120 percent of storage of average of last 10 years. Two, the soil moisture level is good possibly due to the late rains in October 2022 and March 2023.

Droughts and Indian agriculture sector

Source: MOSPI and IMD

As per our research, a one percent reduction in rainfall brings down India’s agricultural performance by 0.36 per cent. But in the recent years, it appears that the agriculture sector may have developed some resilience to deficit rains (Figure above). Take the example of the two consecutive droughts of 2014 and 2015. While the agricultural sector performance fell by a meagre 0.2 per cent in 2014, it rose by 0.6 per cent in 2015. Similarly, the country’s agricultural sector also appears to have withstood the worst drought in nearly 30 years in 2009-10 with a rainfall deficit of about 22 per cent — but with the sector growing at 0.8 per cent.

Agri-GDP and farmer distress

As per the data on farmer suicides by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) (Figure below), it appears that in the last 25 years, farmer suicide numbers peaked in the three drought years of 2002, 2004, and 2009. Since 2009, the number of farmer suicides had started to go down, but they rose again in 2014 and 2015, which were consecutive drought years.

Source: NCRB and IMD

This should not be very surprising. Depending on the distribution of rainfall and the extent of irrigation coverage in various regions, at an all-India level the performance in agri-GDP terms may not look too bad, but the drought-prone regions suffer massive distress. It could be in terms of lower yields, complete crop loss, weaker animals, crisis of drinking water, and even deaths due to a heat wave.

The road ahead

India is fast developing resilience to droughts at the macro-level; at the micro-level we still need contingency plans for seeds, advisories, agricultural practices, among others. Not just the quantity of monsoon rains which are critical, but also their geographic and weekly spread is equally important. Besides, unprecedented combinations of moisture and temperature are triggering pest attacks.

The ICAR’s CRIDA (Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad) is responsible for preparing the contingency plans. We need a 360-degree approach during such situations: the ICAR, through its KVKs, should spread awareness about drought-tolerant seed varieties and the state governments should place timely orders for such varieties. In case the first sowing fails due to dry weather conditions, enough quality seeds should be made available to augment the second-round seeding.

Regular advisories about alternative crops which require lesser irrigation should reach farmers via every possible information mode. The ministry of agriculture already has a mechanism to reach out to crores of farmers through the m-Kisan portal and SMS messages.

The states should expand the coverage under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) to provide crop insurance to farmers, particularly in the drought-prone regions.

Livestock are particularly vulnerable to droughts. The problems of high feed and fodder costs already exists and milk prices are 11 per cent higher than last year (DOCA, India average wholesale price). A contingency plan for fodder needs to be put in place, especially for traditional drought-prone regions.

Based on the experience of handling drought in 2014-15, the Government of India issued an updated drought manual. It provides guidance on various aspects of drought management. The officers at various levels should be trained in time for effective and timely management of drought situation, as it emerges.

We only hope the monsoon rains do not disappoint as they continue to be critical for Indian economy, and the livelihoods.

(Shweta Saini is an agricultural economist and CEO, Arcus Policy Research, and Siraj Hussain is former Union Agriculture Secretary. Views expressed are personal.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.