The southwest monsoon has begun its withdrawal but, as the rainy season draws to a close, drought conditions persist across more than half of India, with scientists warning that the current spell appears worse than the 2015-16 drought in its spread and persistence.
Some parts of the country have slipped into ‘extreme’ and ‘exceptional’ drought, even as El Niño continues to strengthen in the tropical Pacific. The World Meteorological Organization has said the event is firmly established and is expected to persist through February 2027, raising the risk of prolonged rainfall and temperature anomalies in several regions.
Around 52 per cent of the country’s area was under dry or drought conditions as of September 16, according to the latest assessment by IIT Gandhinagar’s India Drought Monitor.
The data paints a worrisome picture, with the area under dry or drought conditions expanding rapidly — from 38.9 per cent about a month ago to 52.5 per cent by September 16, an increase of nearly 35 per cent.
“This drought looks worse than the 2015-16 drought,” said Karthikeyan Lanka, associate professor at IIT Bombay’s Centre for Climate Studies, who has been tracking agricultural drought conditions across the country.
He stressed that the comparison was qualitative, based on how the drought has evolved through the monsoon, particularly its persistence, geographical spread and the length of dry periods between spells of rain.
While the monsoon season is in its final stretch, the rainfall picture has been uneven. Between June 1 and September 22, 2026, India received 706.9 mm of rainfall against a normal of 832.4 mm, a deficit of 15 per cent, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
While this still falls within IMD’s ‘normal’ range, 41 per cent of the country’s area had deficient seasonal rainfall, while 42 per cent was in the normal category.
The drought stress remained particularly widespread in western and southern India. Around 79 per cent of western India and 67 per cent of southern India was under dry or drought conditions. In the Northeast, the share stood at 62 per cent, followed by 47 per cent in the Northwest, 42 per cent in the East, 41 per cent in the North and 40 per cent in central India.
Several of the areas now showing drought also ended up with substantial seasonal rainfall deficits. Coastal Andhra Pradesh was 37 per cent below normal, Rayalaseema 43 per cent, northern and southern interior Karnataka 32 per cent each, Kerala 28 per cent and Marathwada in Maharashtra 36 per cent below normal during June 1-September 20.
The rainfall shortfalls are also being reflected in soil-moisture stress across several of these regions. Agricultural drought forecasts from researchers at IIT Bombay, covering September 7 to October 4, point to persistent drought conditions in parts of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and western Madhya Pradesh.
The forecast suggested that although recent spells of rain have temporarily replenished soil moisture in some areas, deficit conditions were likely to return across parts of eastern and southern India. The persistence is particularly notable in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, which are also among the states showing widespread dry or drought conditions in IIT Gandhinagar’s drought monitor’s latest assessment.
Lanka said one of the distinguishing features of this year’s drought has been the repeated alternation between wet and dry spells rather than sustained rainfall through the monsoon.
“The monsoon was happening in spells and continuous rainfall activity was not happening. It was a period of wetting and drying,” he said.
This resulted in longer periods of drying, with drought conditions persisting for several weeks in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, northern Karnataka and parts of Jharkhand.
That persistence, Lanka said, set the current drought apart from previous drought years. In earlier episodes, rainfall spells tended to weaken drought conditions, whereas this year dry conditions have repeatedly returned or continued even after rain. “In 2015-16 drought wasn’t as widespread as we are seeing now,” he said.
Western Madhya Pradesh, which had received substantial rainfall, also illustrates this persistence, as it continued to show drought stress. This, he said, underlines that “short-term rainfall does not necessarily translate into immediate drought recovery when antecedent soil-moisture deficits remain.”
The southwest monsoon, which runs from June to September, is critical not only for India’s kharif crops but also for replenishing reservoirs, recharging groundwater and restoring the soil moisture needed for the next cropping season.
About 55-60 per cent of India’s net sown area is rainfed, making agriculture across large parts of the country heavily dependent on the timing and distribution of monsoon rainfall.
And the first signs of stress were already visible in the acreage data. As of September 11, the total area under kharif crops stood at 1,096.49 lakh hectares (lha), compared with 1,112.54 lha during the corresponding period last year, a decline of 16.05 lha, according to the Union agriculture ministry.
Rice accounted for much of this decline. Around 426.81 lha had been sown under paddy, nearly 17 lakh ha less than at the same time last year. Karnataka recorded a decline of 4.54 lakh ha, Telangana 4.46 lakh ha, Andhra Pradesh 1.90 lakh ha, Madhya Pradesh 1.75 lakh ha, Tamil Nadu 1.40 lakh ha and Maharashtra 1.15 lakh ha.
Several of these states also figure in the IIT Bombay forecast for persistent agricultural drought.
For farmers, the persistence of agricultural drought this late in the monsoon is particularly significant. Kharif crops are now at critical stages of growth and, in areas where soil moisture remains depleted, even late spells of rain may not fully make up for moisture stress accumulated over the season.
The impact was most likely to show up not only in the area sown, but also in yields at harvest.
The concern could extend into the rabi season, which follows soon after the southwest monsoon withdraws. Farmers in large parts of the country depend on residual soil moisture left by the monsoon and reservoirs for sowing and establishment of winter crops.
The vulnerability had been flagged early in the monsoon itself. The Union agriculture ministry and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research had in June identified 315 districts as potentially vulnerable to El Niño-related farm distress, of which 111 were placed in a high-priority category because irrigation coverage was below 25 per cent.