The West Bengal government has declared 11 of the 18 districts as drought-affected.
While the overall monsoon in the country has been normal, it has been about 30 per cent deficient in West Bengal, with most of the state’s water reservoirs running dry.
As a result, the kharif paddy production could be less by 2.7 million tonnes, said State Agriculture Minister Naren De. West Bengal, the largest rice-producing state in the country, had last year produced 10 million tonnes of paddy during the kharif season.
As paddy cultivation could not be done on 1.1 million hectares of land due to the drought, the state would release Rs 50 crore to enable farmers to cultivate crops on at least 600,000 hectares, West Bengal Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta said.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will also write to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking him to send a Central team to visit the drought-affected areas in the state, said Dasgupta.
The state would also convert short-term crop loans into long-term loans to help farmers, he added.
The districts affected by the drought include the four high-productivity states of Bardhaman, Birbhum, Nadia and Hooghly.
According to forecast by the India Meteorological Department, total rainfall in the country as a whole during the August-September period is likely to be 107 per cent of the long period average, with a model error of plus/minus 7 per cent.
