It’s been a good monsoon this year. Despite a tail-end splash of excessive rainfall, with consequent flooding in Assam, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and eastern Uttar Pradesh, and anxiety in the early weeks of low rainfall, by and large this year’s south-west monsoon, which has now started to retreat, has been benign and benevolent. The country has recorded a rainfall of four per cent above normal. Thankfully, pre-monsoon apprehensions caused by pessimistic initial forecast by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) have been belied. The United Progressive Alliance government has been lucky with regard to the monsoon — the rain gods have been happy to smile on it for six years out of eight over its two consecutive terms. The performance of the monsoon and the resultant optimistic farm outlook should provide some comfort to a nation that faces persistently high inflation, though till now it has not had a conclusive impact on inflationary expectations.
Fortunately, the time and spatial distribution of the rainfall, critical to the impact the monsoon has on agricultural production, have been optimal. The acreage under paddy has reportedly expanded by over three million hectares, paving the way for another bumper rice harvest and the consequential swelling of the government’s mounting grain stocks. Moreover, the delayed withdrawal of the monsoon, beginning September 23, against the normal date of September 1, augurs well for the next rabi season. The munificence of the monsoon this year can also be seen in the country’s 81 major reservoirs whose water levels have gone up to 132 billion cubic metres, 18 per cent above last year’s level and over 30 per cent in excess of the long period average. This will help sustain water flow in irrigation canals even after the monsoon is over, thereby ensuring a good rabi harvest. Since 36 of these reservoirs service hydel power units, there is good news on the power production front as well.
On the downside, the off-the-mark forecast by IMD shows that it is still unable to offer accurate predictions about the monsoon. IMD had forecast in April this year that the total rainfall this monsoon would be two per cent below normal. It subsequently lowered the estimate, well after the onset of the monsoon in June, to five per cent below normal. But, on the contrary, the actual rainfall has turned out to be above normal by around that much margin. However, the monsoon is not over yet. In eastern and southern states monsoon showers are continuing. Surprisingly, IMD has not been able to evolve a reliable monsoon prediction model ever since the successful 16-parameter statistical regression model was discarded in 2002 because it was no longer able to predict rainfall, having done so for 12 successive years since 1988. Heavy investment towards expanding infrastructure for weather data collection, including installation of Doppler radars and super-fast computing equipment as well as augmentation of satellite imagery inputs, has been of little avail. In contrast, weather offices in other countries routinely release accurate forecasts. Can IMD learn from them?
