This year’s monsoon rains are expected to only bring 88 percent or less than the usual output, putting thousands of acres of crops and millions of people at risk. A drought year is defined as one bringing less than 90 percent of the long-term average of rains.
“El Nino is the major factor for the downgraded monsoon forecast. Its effects are already visible in the form of the ongoing heatwave that has claimed an unprecedented number of lives,” D Sivananda Pai, the India Meteorological Department’s lead monsoon forecaster, told the Times of India last week.
Over half of India’s farms lack irrigation, leaving millions of farmers at the mercy of the monsoon rains. With the monsoon season running from June to September, the needed rains finally hit the southernmost coast of the country last week, five days later than expected.
According to Reuters, the effects of the weakened monsoon output this year could drastically reduce crops. In a statement, the prime minister asked government officials to “ensure quick results for farmers by reviewing administrative mechanisms, financial arrangements and technology use in irrigation.”
Modi also has asked for an intensive effort to increase the number of farm ponds used for irrigation, adding that decreasing levels of groundwater in a number of Indian states could eventually result in a shift in crop patterns.
Last year in July, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley budgeted 10 billion rupees ($155 million) for Modi’s irrigation plan that would bring irrigation to every farm in India.
Drought and its impact on the land and people of India
With over one billion people to feed, imagine one-fourth of the land turned to desert, and we are talking about India. “Worsening droughts in India are having an impact on the desertification trend, as vegetation dries up and is often never replaced,” says Kenneth Rapoza in an article, “Worsening Droughts Add To India’s Desertification Problem,” written in Forbes, June 18, 2014.
With 69 percent of India’s land considered dry or semi-arid, it is essential that the land be protected from deforestation, fragmentation, degradation and drought. But how do you implement plans on a grand scale such as Modi is wanting to do when a vast majority of the population in these regions is living in poverty, barely getting by?
Based on a report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Secretariat, the key human influences leading to desertification in India are unsustainable agricultural practices, industrial waste, over-mining and clear-cutting by local villagers.
The Modi plan is broad and sweeping, to be sure, but until the causes, unsustainable farming methods and education of the population in stopping clear-cutting of forests is accomplished, not much will come of irrigation ditches.
