Munificent monsoon

IT’S been a good monsoon this

year. Despite a tail-end splash

of excessive rainfall, with consequent

flooding in Assam, Orissa,

Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and

eastern Uttar Pradesh, and anxiety

in the early weeks of low rainfall,

by and large this year’s south-west

monsoon, which has now started to

retreat, has been benign and benevolent.

The country has recorded a

rainfall of four per cent above normal.

Thankfully, pre-monsoon apprehensions

caused by pessimistic

initial forecast by the Indian Meteorological

Department (IMD)

have been belied. The United Progressive

Alliance government has

been lucky with regard to the monsoon

— the rain gods have been happy

to smile on it for six years out of

eight over its two consecutive terms.

The performance of the monsoon

and the resultant optimistic farm

outlook should provide some comfort

to a nation that faces persistently

high inflation, though till now

it has not had a conclusive impact

on inflationary expectations.

Fortunately, the time and spatial

distribution of the rainfall, critical

to the impact the monsoon has

on agricultural production, have

been optimal. The acreage under

paddy has reportedly expanded by

over three million hectares, paving

the way for another bumper rice

harvest and the consequential

swelling of the government’s mounting

grain stocks. Moreover, the delayed

withdrawal of the monsoon,

beginning September 23, against

the normal date of September 1, augurs

well for the next rabi season.

The munificence of the monsoon

this year can also be seen in

the country’s 81 major reservoirs

whose water levels have gone up to

132 billion cubic metres, 18 per cent

above last year’s level and over

30 per cent in excess of the long period

average. This will help sustain

water flow in irrigation canals even

after the monsoon is over, thereby

ensuring a good rabi harvest.

Since 36 of these reservoirs service

hydel power units, there is good

news on the power production front

as well.

On the downside, the off-themark

forecast by IMD shows that

it is still unable to offer accurate

predictions about the monsoon. IMD

had forecast in April this year that

the total rainfall this monsoon would

be two per cent below normal. It

subsequently lowered the estimate,

well after the onset of the monsoon

in June, to five per cent below normal.

But, on the contrary, the actual

rainfall has turned out to be

above normal by around that much

margin. However, the monsoon is

not over yet. In eastern and southern

states monsoon showers are

continuing. Surprisingly, IMD has

not been able to evolve a reliable

monsoon prediction model ever

since the successful 16-parameter

statistical regression model was

discarded in 2002 because it was

no longer able to predict rainfall,

having done so for 12 successive

years since 1988. Heavy investment

towards expanding infrastructure

for weather data collection, including

installation of Doppler

radars and super-fast computing

equipment as well as augmentation

of satellite imagery inputs, has been

of little avail. In contrast, weather

offices in other countries routinely

release accurate forecasts.

Can IMD learn from them?