Up in the sky

Expect a good monsoon, but have patience

Undeterred by the lacklustre performance of the monsoon so far, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has revised upwards its long-range rainfall forecast for this year to 102 per cent of normal from 98 per cent projected earlier in April. By contrast, the rainfall till now is 12 per cent below normal and its distribution over space and time is highly skewed. Besides, its advance towards the central and northern parts is behind schedule by one-to-two weeks. If, despite such aberrations, the IMD has chosen to elevate its rainfall projection — and that too with a narrower error margin of ±4 per cent, instead of ±5 per cent previously — it does reflect the forecaster’s confidence that the monsoon will manage to make up the deficiencies in the remaining three months of the rainy season (June to September). No doubt, there are some valid reasons behind the IMD’s sanguinity. But there are reasons to doubt it as well, especially considering the IMD’s dismal past record of monsoon prediction. The IMD had failed to foresee last year’s drought despite repeated revisions in its rainfall predictions. The six parameters-based ensemble monsoon forecasting model, which was way off the mark last year, has again been used for generating this year’s prediction.

 

Interestingly, the government, especially the food and agriculture ministry, itself seems to be an IMD sceptic, given that it has not yet drawn down the mountains of unsustainable grain stocks that it has built up. The present stock-holding of grains is more than sufficient to feed the public distribution system (PDS) for an entire year without further inventory replenishment. Yet, the ministry is wary of off-loading the stocks in the domestic market or exporting them till a clearer picture of the actual rainfall and kharif sowing emerges. As a result, huge quantities of grains are facing decay for want of proper storage.

That said, it cannot be denied that there have been some positive developments on the weather front which bode well for the monsoon. For one, the dreaded El Nino factor, which had peaked in December, has not only dissipated but has yielded way to the emergence of La Nina (opposite of El Nino) which invariably has a positive bearing on the monsoon. Furthermore, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which generally portends anomalous rainfall patterns, is expected to enter a harmless phase by moving away from the Indian Ocean. Moreover, the estimates of the likely rainfall made by several other national and international organisations using statistical and dynamic models also suggest normal to above normal monsoon rainfall this year. Finally, past rainfall trends indicate that a widespread drought is most often followed by an year of bountiful rainfall. This happened after the last century’s worst drought in 1987 and in recent years after the drought years of 2002 and 2004. For this, farmers expect copious rainfall this year, after last year’s severe drought. If the rain God smiles, a good harvest in the current kharif should help cool down food inflation that has persistently remained in the high teens. This should also help recharge groundwater aquifers and refill reservoirs, both of which have been drawn down heavily in the year gone by. But, what finally happens is all up in the sky.