When does India declare drought and how is it linked to the monsoon

Here's a lowdown on the process of determining drought as India braces for the southwest monsoon after four surplus-rainfall years

Seven years ago, the cumulative rainfall across India during the June-September southwest monsoon season dropped below 90 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA) to end at 87.3 per cent.

Thus, 2015 was officially classified as a “deficient” monsoon year.

Since then, there have been no low-rainfall years. On the contrary, the last four years —2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 — were rainfall-surplus years.

However, 2023 could turn out differently as after a gap of four years, the dreaded El Niño phenomenon is set to strike the southwest monsoon season.

To what extent it will cause rainfall deficiency and disturb rain patterns is a matter of conjecture at this point. The coming days will provide the answers.

Also, all El Niño years haven’t led to low rains and even if the cumulative rainfall is below normal, if it is well distributed and timely, the impact might not be as severe as it has been in the past.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) in its April forecast has predicted “normal” rain, while private weather forecasting agency Skymet said it will be “sub-par”. Already, the onset of monsoon over the Kerala coast is delayed by three to four days.

All eyes will be on the progress of the southwest monsoon and its movement over the mainland. Any big let-up anywhere will raise eyebrows.

Being a large country, in any given year nearly 15-20 per cent of India’s landmass does not have adequate monsoon rains. Nonetheless, around 56 per cent of the net cultivable area of the country is rainfed, accounting for 44 per cent of the food grain production. Therefore, the southwest monsoon rain is critical for agriculture and food security.

The June-September showers contribute around 73 per cent of the annual precipitation that India receives. But if the area happens to be in largely rainfed zones, it can cause considerable distress.

Over the years, governments at the Centre as well as states have tried to address drought and rainfall deficiency more effectively. With multiple relief and rehabilitation measures available, drought is now not viewed as an urgent crisis but more of a management challenge.

Careful monitoring of the symptoms of drought and early warning are key to effective management of the drought, policy makers feel.

Types of drought

Droughts are classified into three distinct types — meteorological, hydrological and agricultural.

Meteorological drought is classified based on rainfall deficiency.

Hydrological drought is deficiencies in surface and sub-surface water supplies leading to a lack of water for normal and specific needs. Such conditions arise even in times of average (or above average) precipitation when increased water usage diminishes the reserves.

And finally, agricultural drought is identified by four consecutive weeks of meteorological drought. Generally, rainfed agriculture areas are more prone to this.

Drought or deficient rainfall?

One big change in India’s drought management is in IMD’s parlance.

Back in 2016 after the last big low-rainfall scenario in the country, the state-run IMD decided to drop the term “drought” from its official terminology.

Officials said an order to this effect was circulated across all offices of IMD, also to be followed in all internal communications.

Then IMD Director General Laxman Singh Rathore had told Business Standard that the word “drought” has been dropped from their official terminology as it fell outside their purview. “We will not use the term ‘drought’ anymore and instead replace it with ‘rainfall deficiency’ whenever we have denoted poor rains,” Rathore had said.

The met department earlier used to clarify a year as drought year whenever rainfall deficiency was more than 10 per cent and when 20-40 per cent of the country was under drought conditions. The official term for this was “All India drought year”.

Similarly, an “All India severe drought year” was classified when rainfall deficiency was more than 10 per cent and the spatial coverage of drought exceeded 40 per cent.

The southwest monsoon in 2015 was 86 per cent of the LPA, which made 2014 and 2015 the fourth case of two consecutive all India deficient monsoon years in 115 years.

Insufficient rains that year had led to a meteorological drought in around 40 per cent of the country.

Drought management

Though IMD no longer classifies any year as drought year and instead terms it a “deficient” monsoon year, it does not mean that mitigation measures have fallen short.

The state governments are primarily responsible for managing and undertaking necessary relief measures in the wake of natural calamities, including drought, hailstorm, and pest attack.

The government of India supplements the efforts of state governments with financial assistance.

In the eventuality of notified calamities, state governments are empowered to take up relief measures from the readily available State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF).

For a severe calamity, additional financial assistance over and above SDRF is sought from the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF), in accordance with items and norms of assistance, after receiving a memorandum from the state government concerned.

A Manual for Drought Management was published in 2009 by the government of India.

To promote the use of modern technology, the manual was revised and updated in December 2016 through a consultative process involving the central ministries concerned, state governments, and scientific, technical and research organisations.

That apart, the National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Monitoring System (NADAMS), developed by the National Remote Sensing Centre, provides near real-time information on prevalence, severity level and persistence of agricultural drought at state/district/sub-district levels.

The NADAMS project is being handled by the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre, Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.

Declaring drought

States monitor data on various critical parameters.

In the event of drought based on the parameters, the state notifies it and submits a memorandum to the central government.

Thereafter, an Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) visits the state to assess the drought situation and recommend financial assistance.

The IMCT sends a report to the Sub-Committee of the National Executive Committee (SC-NEC), headed by the home secretary.

The SC-NEC’s recommendations are placed before the High Level Committee (HLC), chaired by the home minister. The HLC takes the final decision on the quantum of assistance based on the IMCT’s report, SC-NEC recommendations and the items and norms of assistance.

In the central government, the Crisis Management Group on Drought, headed by the central drought relief commissioner, reviews the drought situation with representatives of the ministries/departments and other stakeholders, as and when required.

There is also a Crisis Management Plan for drought that focuses on interventions required during crises. It delineates the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders, including central and state governments and their agencies in managing a calamity.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare through ICAR-Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) also has formulated District Agriculture Contingency Plans for 650 districts for implementing location-specific interventions to sustain agriculture production in the eventuality of any extreme climatic event.

Future plan

To fine-tune its drought management capabilities, the agriculture ministry is launching a geospatial platform for monitoring, assessing, and declaring drought.

It will be a centralised platform for drought-related data, analytical tools and products offering management knowledge and infrastructure, a whole-of government approach with participation from multiple ministries, standardisation of data and maps of drought indicators, and plug-and-play facility for developing geospatial solutions.

Besides, states have been told to prepare in advance to counter any impact of an adverse southwest monsoon.