Over 70% of India reporting drought-like conditions

Over 500 of India’s 718 districts monitored by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) are currently reporting meteorological drought conditions, ranging from mildly dry to extremely dry, according to a new analysis by Down To Earth (DTE). 

This can hamper agricultural production, experts told DTE. 

The findings were based on Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data from August 20, 2023 to September 24, 2023 maintained by IMD. 

SPI is a probabilistic tool deployed by IMD for monitoring drought. Negative values mean drought-like conditions, while positive values mean wetter conditions.

Most of India — 53 per cent of the districts — was found to be in the ‘mildly dry’ category. Almost the whole of Northeast India, pockets of eastern India, Jammu and Kashmir and large parts of the Southern Peninsula, stretching from Maharashtra, Karnataka to Andhra Pradesh in the eastern coast were in the ‘moderately dry’ or ‘extremely dry’ categories. 

SPI is a robust indicator for drought monitoring. But, according to Madhavan Rajeevan, former secretary at the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, these numbers are “tricky to interpret”.

“The SPI categories vary from region to region and one also needs to take into account the ground realities prevailing before outwardly declaring a drought,” he said. 

According to Madhavan, mildly dry in wetter regions in the country, like Cherrapunji, will not make much of a difference compared to arid places like the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra, which is already dry and arid. 

“So, even if 53 per cent of the country is mildly dry, we have to see the ground reality,” Rajeevan said. 

Temporal as well as the spatial distribution of rain this monsoon, coupled with prolonged monsoonal breaks in August may be responsible for 70 per cent of India reporting drought conditions, according to Rajeevan.

Climatologically, a monsoonal break is declared when normalised rainfall anomaly index or deviation from the long-term rainfall average over the core monsoon zone — stretching from Gujarat in the west to West Bengal in the east and where agricultural activities are rain-fed —  exceeds the -1 threshold and the situation persists for at least three consecutive days.

In fact, August 2023 saw the third-longest monsoonal break in the 21st century. It stretched from August 7-18, 2023. The prolonged break led to a 36 per cent rainfall deficit, making August 2023 the driest-ever in 123 years of recorded history. 

According to Rajeevan, since the onset, monsoon 2023 has been highly skewed in its distribution. 

“In June, we had a 10 per cent deficit, then a 13 per cent excess in July, followed by the driest August ever. Spatially, the drier regions have received more rain compared to the wetter regions. So, the distribution has been highly skewed,” Rajeevan said. 

How alarming is the situation? 

“The impact of the driest August is definitely palpable now (dry conditions). It is not a good situation. But the situation needs to be assessed from an agricultural perspective (of how alarming the situation is)”, Rajeevan said. It must have affected the crops, he added.

According to Crop Weather Watch Group, sowing area in 2023 has been 33 per cent more compared to 2022 but that automatically does not translate to greater produce.

To assess the severity of the situation, DTE spoke to Rajesh Sharma, senior journalist and agricultural commodities expert.

With harvesting season still a month away, according to Sharma, it would be difficult to predict how the production will pan out for 2023. 

But according to him, and going by initial trends, apart from soya bean, production of all the agricultural commodities he listed are expected to be lower than last year. This includes food grains like paddy, oil seeds, groundnut and pulses. 

“The cumulative sowing area, when compared to last year, is showing an increase because of three crops — rice, sugarcane and coarse cereals. But that does not mean the production will also increase compared to last year,” Sharma noted.

The biggest reason for a dip in crop production is scanty rainfall in 2023, the expert said.

From June 1 to September 25, 2023, while only five states have reported deficient rainfall based on IMD’s rainfall categorisation. But precipitation was ‘lower than average’ in 20 states, even though all of them come under IMD’s ‘normal’ rainfall category. 

Cumulatively, India has reported a deficit of 5 per cent when compared to the long-term average of 1971-2020. 

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