Revival of rains to wash away farmers' worries

MONSOON WATCH

With the projected revival of the monsoon on around June 19 or 20, despair over adverse impact of break in rains on agriculture should give way to cautious optimism. If the monsoon progresses, the farm sector has nothing to worry, feel agriculture experts.

The crops planted earlier in the southern and north-eastern regions, that received copious rainfall after the early arrival of the monsoon, is in good shape.

Besides, both these regions have been receiving light to medium rainfall in the past few days and the expected revival of the monsoon will give further boost to farming activity.

For the north-western region, the delay in the rains is inconsequential as the monsoon arrives here only in June end.

In any case, the western disturbance that currently hovers over Jammu and Kashmir is expected to bring widespread rains in Punjab, Haryana and north Rajasthan in next two days.

Nursery planting of paddy, the most important kharif crop, is already over and the transplanting is expected to get going shortly in this belt.

The plus factor here is that most reservoirs have enough water to feed the irrigation canals though erratic power supply is causing concern.

However, the vast central tract of the country would have to wait for rains for the farm operations to begin in the right earnest.

The southwest monsoon this year hit Kerala on May 26, five days ahead of normal date (June 1) and advanced rapidly along the west coast to reach Mumbai on May 31, 10 days ahead of schedule. It advanced further to south Gujarat by June 2.

The monsoon, coming from the Bay of Bengal side, covered most north-eastern states by May 27 and 28 and progressed ahead by June 6 to cover West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand. But after June 6, it stopped moving forward. The monsoon, coming from the Arabian sea side, also weakened on June 8, resulting in subdued rainfall throughout the country.

As a result, the commutative monsoon rainfall, which was 68 per cent above normal by June 7, turned below normal by June 14. Most of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions reported scanty or deficient rainfall between June 8 and 14.

The only exceptions were Bihar, Assam and Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura which reported normal rainfall.

The National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) today reported that the conditions were now conducive for the monsoon to revive on June 19 or 20 over peninsular India and then progress northwards towards the other parts of the country.

Fortunately, water level in most of the country's 76 major reservoirs is fairly good this year. The Central Water Commission puts the total water stored in these reservoirs to be around 31.38 billion cubic metres (BCM) on June 9.

This is about 96 per cent higher than last year's corresponding position of 16 BCM and 83 per cent in excess of the past 10 year's average level.

Significantly, as many as 63 of these 76 reservoirs have more than 80 per cent storage.

However, nine reservoirs have reported very low storage. These include Almati and Kabini in Karnataka, Bhima, Mula and Isapur in Maharashtra, Tilaiya in Jharkhand, Sriramsagar in Andhra Pradesh, Gandhi Sagar in Madhya Pradesh and Sabarmati in Gujarat.

Of the country's 12 major river basins, the water situation is precarious only in the Sabarmati basin though it is below long period average also in the Ganga and Narmada basins.

The total water storage in the dams on the Sabarmati basin is whopping 4,150 per cent below 10-year average position. The shortage in the Ganga basin is 30.8 per cent and in Narmada basin 18.2 per cent.

Agriculture experts have advised the farmers to take advantage of the pre-monsoon showers to prepare their fields for sowing. The actual seeding of the crops, as also transplanting of the paddy seedlings, should be taken up only after the setting in of the monsoon.

In the semi-arid areas, the farmers have been suggested to use the present dry spell to clean up their tanks and other water storage structures to facilitate conservation of rain water.