Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his maiden budget presented to the Indian parliament on July 10, expected agricultural growth to be sustained at over 4pc this fiscal — in line with what the previous United Pro­gressive Alliance government had been managing over the past few years.

However, with the elusive south-west monsoon, attaining the 4pc growth target appears to be quite ambitious. The progress of the monsoon has been dismal over the first 45 days so far — from June 1 to July 15 — and the prospects of its revival appear bleak.

According to the Indian Meteo­rological Department (IMD), which keeps promising a revival ‘over the next few days,’ there has been a massive 40pc departure from the long period average (LPA) for the country as a whole as on July 16.

The worst affected are the northwest (with a departure of 53pc from the LPA), and central regions (with a 51pc departure from the LPA). In early June, the IMD had predicted rainfall of 93pc of LPA during July and 96pc for August for the country as a whole. Rainfall below 90pc of LPA is considered a meteorological drought.

India’s National Commission of Agriculture had, in 1976, categorised droughts into three types: meteorological, hydrological and agricultural. The National Oceanic and Atmos­pheric Administration of the US has defined agricultural drought as a combination of temperature and precipitation over several months leading to less than 90pc in yield.

The IMD classifies drought when the rainfall for a week is half of the normal or less and when four such consecutive weeks occur from mid-May to October, it is considered an agricultural drought. The government’s National Remote Sensing Centre defines drought as a condition when the amount of water needed for transpiration and direct evaporation exceeds the amount available in the soil.

Whatever be the definition, a deficit of more than 40pc of the LPA — as evident in the country’s agricultural belts in northwest and central India — is undoubtedly going to be classified a drought. Of course, the IMD is hopeful that rainfall in the rest of season till September will be much better than during the first 45 days, and that the deficit would reduce significantly.

Droughts are indeed not unusual in India, a country where two-thirds of the cultivated land is dependent on monsoons. In fact, the monsoon is erratic in four out of 10 years in the country, and about a third of the land is chronically drought-prone, receiving less than 750mm of rainfall annually.

There have been about half a dozen severe droughts in India over the past four decades, with the worst being in 1972 and 2009. Even in those years, the rainfall deficit was less than 25pc. Agricultural production usually falls off by 10pc in a drought year.

LAST year was a good one for Indian agriculture, with production of food grains touching 263m tonnes, against 255.36m tonnes in the previous year. Agricultural product exports also shot up to $45bn, up from $41bn in the previous year.

Jaitley was confident that even if many parts of the country faced drought, or drought-like conditions, there were adequate food grains in stock. Sowing of kharif crops, excluding paddy, has been far lower this year.

According to the agriculture ministry, sowing has happened in a little over 25m hectares of land till July 12, which is half the comparable figure in 2013. The worst affected have been pulses, oilseeds, cotton and cereals. Sowing of kharif crops has happened in just 35pc of the average area sown over the past five years.

With the monsoon having virtually been absent over central and northwest India — affecting states including Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra — the production of pulses, cotton and soyabean is expected to be badly impacted this year. The only saving grace is the relatively better rainfall in east and northeast India and in the southern peninsula, with departures of 25pc and 27pc respectively from the LPA.

H S Gupta, director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), points out that the erratic monsoon would impact production of cotton, pulses, soyabean and groundnut. Sowing of oilseeds, mainly soyabean, is down by 88pc, while cotton sowing has shrunk by almost 50pc. Rice sowing, though, has reduced by less than 20pc.

A spokesman for the India Pulses and Grains Association says many farmers have migrated to other crops as the delayed rains have affected the sowing of pulses. The country’s major pulse growing states include Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, all of whom are reeling under deficit rainfall.

But Gupta is confident that with central and northwestern India receiving relatively better rainfall last week, farmers would start sowing these crops over the coming days, improving the overall situation.

The prices of pulses, vegetables and fruits have already started rising with fears of lower production this year. One of the major factors for the defeat of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government was its failure to control food inflation.

The BJP, which had launched a vociferous campaign against the government in the run-up to the elections, now finds itself in an unenviable position at the start of its tenure, with the monsoon playing truant. Government leaders including Jaitley claim that it is possible to manage inflation by releasing food grains from godowns and intervening in the markets by banning exports and increasing imports.

Fortunately for the government, inflation eased to 7.3pc in June, the lowest in three years, because of a fall in food prices. The government claimed credit for this, noting that its move to impose restrictions on exports of farm items had its impact.

While onion prices had soared a few weeks ago, the government imposed a minimum export price of $300 on the bulb, cooling down domestic prices. But with the failure of the monsoon, there is fear that onion prices would once again start climbing. The government is now toying with the idea of imposing a ban on onion exports for a couple of months.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, July 21st, 2014