So far, so good

The Indian monsoon is known to progress in surges. As such, breaks in its advance after having hit the country's mainland are quite common. This has happened this year as well, though the overall rainfall position so far is quite good.

Having arrived well ahead of its normal schedule of June 1, its progress has been irregular, yet satisfactory. It had its spells of stagnation in the south in the early part of the season, and has once again been almost stationary in the north-west for the past week.

But meteorologists are confident that their long-range prediction of 100 per cent normal monsoon rainfall this year will hold true. They are also quite sure that the monsoon will cover the entire country by the beginning of July, as is normal.

If that is so, the country should look forward to satisfactory performance by the agriculture sector. The reports about crop planting received from states so far bear out this optimism.

In fact, the initial progress in planting has been better than expected in some respects, because the early outbreak of the monsoon was preceded by good pre-monsoon showers in most parts of the country.

This facilitated not only early or timely commencement of crop sowing operations but also coverage of additional area. The indications are that, barring sugarcane, most other crops are likely to gain in acreage this year.

For all that, there is a need to keep fingers crossed. Last year too, overall rainfall in the country was 2 per cent above normal but a vast tract, spanning from south Maharashtra across to Karnataka and on to Kerala, was left severely water deficient.

As many as 62 meteorological districts experienced drought continuously for a second and in some cases even a third year in succession. This impacted agricultural production as well which has not been not been able to outstrip the peak levels achieved in the past.

Fortunately, most of the areas that suffered from drought in the last season have already received copious showers this time. So much so that Karnataka, which was unwilling to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, had to do so to save its dams after water levels crossed the danger mark due to heavy rains.

Indeed, while the weather retains its uncertainties, there is at least one thing that seems reasonably certain. This is that the agriculture sector this year is unlikely to show the kind of double digit growth it recorded last year over the highly shrunken production base of the previous drought year.

But, at the same time, this year's performance will be a good indicator of whether growth in farm production has got out of the deceleration phase that began in the 1990s. If this trend is not reversed, policy corrections will be called for.