Newpapers need to be careful that they are not used to help speculators while driving up prices of various agricultural commodities. We all know there is lack of rain, but we have to see if this will result in a serious shortage of the crop this year. Surinder Sud (‘Gamble in the monsoons’, July 28) has pointed out, with copious amounts of data, that the correlation between the rainfall and the final crop data is not as straightforward as one would think. This is so for a variety of reasons. For one, it is not the amount of the rainfall, per se, but the way it is spread across a period of time. Second, shortage of rain can be compensated for by ground water — this is why the shortage of rain in the country’s bread basket should not be alarm us since this area is very well irrigated. As Sud has pointed out, the monsoon situation was not very different last year — which turned out to be a bumper crop year.
Ashutosh Desai, New Delhi
