Word: monsoon
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...news for India is scrawled across the scorching sky. Not a speck of monsoon clouds has been spotted over much of north and northwestern India for weeks, and the meteorological office has confirmed fears that the country will get late and below-normal rains this year. In a nation where 60% of farmland depends on rains, and where farms provide livelihood to more than 60% of the population, the news has triggered widespread panic. Top bureaucrats have been huddled up in meetings to chart out contingency plans to minimize damage to an already-stagnant agriculture sector in an economy which...
...hasn't witnessed an Indian summer can imagine the unyielding heat that sucks the earth bone-dry and churns up the fearsome dry wind - the loo - that wilts everything in its path. By mid- to end-June, the monsoon usually covers most of India, bringing down the mercury, soaking the ground and swelling the rivers that are the lifeline of Indian agriculture. The national meteorological department had predicted a normal monsoon earlier this year, but when there was no sign of rain until the middle of June, alarm bells began to ring. Farmers in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh...
...government now predicts that the late monsoon will still bring 93% of an average year's rain. "We're still hoping the rains will come," says K.R. Koundal, director of research at the New Delhi-based Indian Agricultural Research Institute, the government-run institute for agricultural research, education and extension. But for this to hold true, there will have to be moderate to heavy rains from June through September to make up for the shortfall, and even a 7% gap has economists and agricultural scientists worried. India's long stagnant agriculture sector, which has grown only 2% over the last...
...Some agriculture experts even see a potential silver lining to the absentee clouds. They hope the truant monsoon will jolt India's bureaucracy into action to implement much-needed and long-delayed agricultural reforms, as well as improve India's water resources management. Steps should be initiated to link the farmers to the market and improve farm and post-harvest infrastructure, and provide a favorable tax regime for the agriculture and related sectors. The wasteful subsidy regime also needs to be overhauled. Fertilizer subsidies mostly benefit rich farmers and lead to gross overuse. "Subsidized electricity for farmers encourages excessive...
...Although no one in India is explicitly blaming the late monsoon on global warming, a Purdue University study released earlier this year said climate change could influence monsoon dynamics by reducing summer precipitation, delaying the onset of rains and causing longer gaps between rainy periods. "We need to accept now that climate change is something that is bound to happen," says Dr Vibha Dhawan, Director, Bioresources and Biotechnology at The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. "Not just high temperatures but fluctuating temperatures. Not just drought but also floods." We already have such varieties but we've forgotten about...