India's El Nino silver lining: Resilience to poor rainfall improving

Agriculture's role in the economy has reduced over the decades, easing impact of 'climatic shock'

El Nino, the sporadic weather event that has emerged this year, has been linked to changes in rainfall patterns and crop failure and is even said to have played a role in sparking the 1789 French Revolution.

As India tracks El Nino’s impact on monsoon this year, the country’s food production appears more secure than before. The country is becoming more resilient to weather vagaries caused by events like El Nino, said a 2015 International Monetary Fund (IMF) study, which should be read alongside experts' advice against complacency. Key changes over the decades have reduced vulnerability.

Food grain production 50 years ago was more dependent on Kharif crops sown in the monsoon. Rabi crops, which are sown in winter and largely on irrigated land, now account for more than 50 per cent of India’s food grain production. They are grown on 44 per cent of India’s available agricultural area  (chart 1, click image for interactive link).

“Areas which are rain-fed do not have...cropping intensity (an indicator of the number of crops grown in a single year). The overall cropping intensity in the country is 140 per cent which means 40 per cent of the agricultural area is double-cropped. But in Punjab, 90 per cent of the agricultural area is double-cropped because they have assured irrigation. Naturally, the productivity of Rabi will be higher,” says Ashok Gulati, distinguished professor at the Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).

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Improved irrigation is another mitigating factor. Of the total area under food grain cultivation in 1950-51, India had irrigation for 18.1 per cent. The number improved to nearly 57 per cent in 2020 (chart 2).

Pratap Birthal, director at ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, says that various strategies have built drought resistance in crops. “Impact of the climatic shock on agriculture has reduced mainly because of a reorientation in government policy, agriculture research; and because of an increased focus on improving irrigation systems using technology,” he says.

El Nino’s impact is also a function of its interactions with the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), a climate pattern building up in the ocean. A positive IOD may help rainfall despite El Nino and worsen its impact if it is negative.

Agriculture accounts for a fifth of India’s economy from nearly 50 per cent in the 1960s, easing the economic impact of poor rains. But a large share of the Indian working population remains engaged in the sector (chart 3).

India’s agriculture-dependent employment is higher than neighbours like Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.