The monsoon recovery

Reservoirs are still not adequately restocked

The way the monsoon has recovered this year after a delayed and weak start to near-normal in the very first half of its four-month run (June to September) does not have many parallels. A scary rain deficit of 33 per cent at the end of the first monsoon month of June shrank dramatically to below 9 per cent in just four weeks, thanks to copious precipitation in July. This, coupled with the weather office’s prediction of 100 per cent normal rain in August and September, has swung the outlook for monsoon-dependent sectors, chiefly agriculture and hydel power, and rural demand from despair to cautious optimism.

The lag in crop planting, which had mounted to over 30 per cent by June-end, has, by and large, been made up. More sowing is expected in the next week or so, because over 66 per cent of the country has already received normal or excess rain. The anticipated continuation of the monsoon’s good showing in the latter half of the season may ensure better crops and higher yields. But the fingers still need to be kept crossed. The intense bouts of rain, as has been the hallmark of this year’s monsoon, are seldom without a downside. Parts of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, and Assam have seen devastating floods. Similar deluges may damage crops, property, and infrastructure, and take human and animal lives in other parts of the country as well.

This apart, the upswing in the rains does not reflect adequately in the restocking of reservoirs. Till July 25, nearly 75 per cent of the major dams have got filled only up to 40 per cent of their capacity. The overall water stock in all the reservoirs taken together, being 63 per cent of capacity, presented a slightly better picture, though even this is below last year’s corresponding level of 71 per cent. The river basins in the southern region, including those of the Krishna, Mahanadi, Godavari, and Cauvery, are particularly short of water. Some of the dams in Kerala, which brimmed over to cause catastrophic flooding in August last year, are not even half-full as yet. The silver lining, however, is that there is still time for replenishing these dams. The current vigorous phase of the monsoon and the projected normal showers in the next two months can normalise the situation. Restoring water reserves is essential to meet the needs of irrigation, industry, hydel power production, and the domestic sector in the post-monsoon period right up to the next summer. 

Significantly, the unconventional track record of this year’s monsoon has been attributed by weather experts largely to the interplay of two counteracting meteorological phenomena — El Nino (monsoon-inimical warming of the Pacific Ocean) and the Indian Ocean Dipole, or IOD (monsoon-friendly temperature gradient in the Indian Ocean). While El Nino, which affected the monsoon in June, is said to have turned neutral and lost its sting, the positive IOD continues to favour the monsoon. Unlike most other weather watchers who were uncertain about the progress of El Nino this year, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) was spot on to foresee that it would not endure long enough to undermine the Indian monsoon. The IMD will, hopefully, prove correct in predicting normal rain in the rest of the season as well.