On paper, India’s southwest monsoon ended 13 per cent below the long-period average, a deficit figure that can make a poor rainfall season appear less severe than the conditions unfolding on the ground.
On September 29, 2026, when the countrywide monsoon rainfall deficit stood at around 12 per cent, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said there was “no major crisis at the national level”, although he acknowledged problems in some regions.
But in several states, the situation on the ground has been far more serious, with prolonged dry spells, depleted soil moisture and crop losses prompting formal drought declarations since late August.
The national rainfall shortfall this year is smaller than during some of India’s major droughts: Both 1987 and 2002 ended with monsoon rainfall 19 per cent below normal. Yet, severe drought conditions have emerged across parts of several states this year despite an all-India deficit of about 13 per cent.
As of this week, drought conditions continue to persist across parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana, while as much as 70.6 per cent of the country’s area was experiencing dry or drought conditions, according to IIT Gandhinagar’s India Drought Monitor.
This underscores how much the timing and distribution of rainfall matter, and also raises questions over why large parts of the country remain so vulnerable to rainfall shocks despite decades of investment in water conservation, watershed development and drought-proofing.
For many farming families, the drought has already translated into failed crops, and income losses, and mounting debt, after a season of high input costs. In some of the worst-affected areas, fodder shortages are forcing farmers to sell cattle at distress prices, while falling water availability is adding pressure on both livestock and household needs.
So far, three states have formally declared drought, and all three have done it at the level of the taluk or mandal.
Karnataka was first. On August 27 it declared 101 taluks drought-hit for the Kharif season, 89 of them severe and 12 moderate. It then added taluks in phases, reaching 177 by September 22 and 217 of its 240 taluks by October 2. A union government team is in the state to assess the damage.
Maharashtra declared drought in 265 of its 358 talukas across the state, on September 25, after one of the driest monsoons in years left standing crops wilted in the fields and farmers staring at a season of mounting losses. District collectors have been directed to immediately begin field assessments of crop damage, including panchnamas, photographs showing the condition of crops in the surveyed areas, and GPS-tagged records, and submit reports to the government.
Andhra Pradesh has become the third state to declare drought. On October 2, the state government issued an order declaring 388 mandals across 21 out of 28 districts as drought-affected for the 2026 Kharif season, classifying 283 as severely affected and 105 as moderately affected.
More states are now assessing whether parts of their territory meet the criteria for a formal drought declaration.
According to news reports, in Telangana, the government has begun identifying drought-hit mandals and conducting field-level assessments of crop losses. This is despite the state as a whole recording a monsoon rainfall deficit of around 18 per cent, illustrating once again the wide variation hidden within seasonal averages.
Rajasthan, which ended the southwest monsoon around 22 per cent below normal, is also assessing crop losses and scarcity conditions. Officials were carrying out girdawari surveys in affected areas, as per local news reports.
A deficient monsoon by itself does not automatically result in a drought declaration. Under the Union government’s Drought Manual, the responsibility for formally declaring drought rests with state governments, which are required to assess a combination of rainfall, dry spells, crop conditions, vegetation, soil moisture and hydrological indicators before carrying out ground verification in affected areas.
For the Kharif season, drought is ordinarily required to be declared by October 31, while the deadline for Rabi drought is March 31.
The manual, however, also allows states to declare drought as early as August if conditions already point to a developing crisis. Deficient rainfall in June and July, combined with prolonged dry spells and a significant reduction in the area sown, can trigger such an early declaration.
For instance, the order issued by Andhra Pradesh states that the state government was opting for an early declaration, ahead of the October 31 deadline, after recording a 53.4 per cent rainfall deficit between June and August amid prevailing El Niño conditions. Between June 1 and August 31, the state received an average 197.6 mm of rainfall against the normal 424.3 mm.
Meanwhile, Karnataka recorded a 35 per cent rainfall deficit between June and September, its worst southwest monsoon in 55 years. Maharashtra ended the season around 19 per cent below normal, but the Marathwada region was about 40 per cent below normal, while districts such as Solapur and Beed recorded deficits of around 58 per cent and 51 per cent respectively.
Telangana ended the monsoon 17 per cent below normal and Rajasthan recorded a 22 per cent shortfall during the season.
There have been 25 major drought years recorded in India: 1873, 1877, 1899, 1901, 1904, 1905, 1911, 1918, 1920, 1941, 1951, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1987, 2002, 2009, 2014, and 2015.
The 13 per cent all-India monsoon deficit this year is smaller than in India’s most severe drought years, though it is not far from other years that were also classified as drought years. In 1987 and 2002, two of the worst drought years, the June-September rainfall deficit was 19 per cent, while in 2015 it was 14 per cent.
The way the rainfall deficit developed, however, differed sharply between these years. In 1987, rainfall was deficient through much of the season -- 22 per cent below normal in June, 29 per cent in July, 4 per cent in August, and 25 per cent in September.
In 2002, June rainfall was actually 4 per cent above normal before July rainfall collapsed to 51 per cent below normal, producing one of the most severe mid-monsoon breaks on record. In 2015 too, June ended 16 per cent above normal, but rainfall turned deficient in each of the following three months, including deficits of 22 per cent in August and 24 per cent in September.
In 2026, the monsoon began with a sharp 40 per cent rainfall deficit in June. July brought a temporary recovery, with all-India rainfall 1 per cent above normal, although the cumulative June-July deficit still stood at 13 per cent. Rainfall slipped again in August, ending the month 16.3 per cent below normal. By the end of the four-month southwest monsoon season, the country had recorded an overall rainfall deficit of around 13 per cent.
The timing of formal drought declarations in different drought years also varied. During the 2002 drought, several states began declaring affected areas from July and August onwards, much like this year. In 2015, by contrast, many declarations and requests for central drought assistance came later, largely in October and November after the monsoon season had ended.
There is no denying that 2026 is an El Niño year, and countries across several regions have been grappling with drought, heat, and water stress as the event has strengthened. In India too, the monsoon has been affected by prolonged dry spells and large regional rainfall deficits.
But the recurrence of severe drought conditions despite a relatively smaller national rainfall deficit points to a deeper structural vulnerability. This vulnerability persists despite investment in drought-proofing and water conservation.
Over the years, governments have expanded watershed-development programmes, irrigation, groundwater recharge and water-harvesting works. Under MGNREGA alone, millions of water-conservation and drought-proofing assets have been created across rural India.
Till 2025, 6.289 million water-related works had been completed, while another 761,000 were ongoing under the rural employment guarantee programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (Mahatma Gandhi NREGA), now renamed as VB-G RAM G. These include structures such as check dams, earthen dams, stop dams, underground dykes and rainwater-harvesting structures designed to augment groundwater recharge.
The investment has continued at considerable scale. In just the last three and a half years, between 2023-24 and 2026-27 (up to June 30), the government has spent Rs 1.353 lakh crore on water-related works under MGNREGA, as per Ministry of Jal Shakti data.
The scale of intervention extends beyond MGNREGA. According to the Union rural development ministry, around 900,000 water-harvesting structures were created or rejuvenated under watershed-development programmes over the past 12 years. During this period, 7,602 watershed projects covering around 34 million hectares were undertaken, while protective irrigation was extended to about 2 million hectares.
In another programme called Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari (JSJB), launched in 2024, at least 1 million groundwater recharge structures were created, with more than 2.7 million artificial recharge structures reported across the country. And JSJB 2.0 was launched on June 1, 2025 with a special focus on accelerating groundwater recharge in over-exploited and critical districts through low-cost, hyper-local interventions.
Against the target of constructing at least one crore groundwater recharge structures by 31 May 2026, more than 15 million structures have been reported nationwide, exceeding the target by over 50 per cent, according to a press statement.
But the sheer number of structures created and the scale of this intervention makes the persistence of drought vulnerability harder to ignore. If millions of water-conservation structures have been built and lakhs of crores of rupees spent on drought-proofing, why do large agricultural regions still slip so quickly into severe water stress when the monsoon falters?
Water conservation experts say that part of the answer may lie in whether these structures are located where they are most needed, maintained over time, and capable of storing or recharging enough water to withstand long dry spells.
But maintenance and siting are only part of a larger, still unresolved question. The 2026 drought has once again exposed how deeply India’s farm economy remains tied to the timing and distribution of the monsoon — and whether the country’s vast investments in water conservation have translated into resilience where it is needed most.