Lucky Thirteen

Nature's benevolence, they say, is boundless. Otherwise, the bonanza of consecutive good monsoons could not have been expected to last for 13 years in a row. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted that the south-west monsoon this year will set in on time, around June 1 on the Kerala coast, and bring normal precipitation during the four-month rainy season (June to September) throughout the country.

This current spell of good monsoon began soon after the severe country-wide drought of 1987. While overall rainfall was "in excess" in 1988, it has been more or less in the "normal" range in the subsequent 11 years since 1989. However, the distribution of rainfall, which is also very crucial for agriculture, has on occasions been skewed, causing wide fluctuations in the production of foodgrains and commercial crops. On the whole, however, the farm output graph has maintained an upward trend in this period.

 

The monsoon forecast was awaited this year with more than the normal anxiety. The recent forecast of a below-normal monsoon by a Bangalore-based organisation on the basis of an experimental mathematical model had lent a degree of uncertainty to the monsoon's performance. Since agricultural growth last year (1999-2000) had been indifferent, due chiefly to poorly distributed rainfall during the season which virtually missed out parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, a good monsoon this year was considered essential to bring the

country back to the path of agricultural growth. With most other sectors of the economy doing reasonably well, all eyes have been focused on the skies in the hope that a good monsoon-driven performance in agriculture will take the country onto a high growth path.

The IMD deserves credit for developing the statistical model, based on 16 regional and global parameters, for making long-range monsoon forecasts. However, at the same time, it needs to realise that the utility of its prediction for agricultural planning is rather limited for two reasons. First, the prediction comes only a few days before the actual onset of rains, leaving little time for rainfall-specific crop planning. Secondly, it gives no indication of the distribution of rainfall over the season which actually determines crop yields. What a farmer and farm policy planner needs to know is whether the rainfall would be consistent throughout the season or there will be dry spells in between, causing distress to

standing crops. Such information can help prepare contingency plans to save the crops as also arrange inputs needed for the plans. In case of an anticipated delayed start or early end to the monsoon, farmers can be advised to go in for the kind of crops and their varieties which will be able to complete their life cycle within the period of moisture availability.

Though the IMD has brought about some improvement in its forecast since last year by giving an indication of the likely total precipitation in three broad homogeneous regions of the country, this information, too, is of limited use. In case a long-range fine-tuned prediction is not yet feasible, the IMD should at least consider giving medium-term forecasts, indicating the likely weather over two-week spans to help farmers plan their field operations.