India’s monsoon rain a fifth below normal so far
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An elderly woman cooling off with a street water tap during a hot afternoon in Kolkata, India, on June 14, 2024.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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MUMBAI - India’s monsoon has delivered a fifth less rain than normal so far this season, the weather department said on June 17, in a worrying sign for the vital agricultural sector.
Summer rain, critical to economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy, usually begins in the south around June 1 before spreading nationwide by July 8, allowing farmers to plant crops such as rice, cotton, soya beans and sugar cane.
India has received 20 per cent less rainfall than normal since June 1, according to data compiled by the state-run India Meteorological Department (IMD), with almost all regions except for a few southern states seeing shortfalls and some north-western states experiencing heatwaves.
The rain shortfall in central India, which grows soya bean, cotton, sugar cane and pulses, has risen to 29 per cent, while the paddy-growing southern region received 17 per cent more rainfall than normal due to the early onset of the monsoon, according to the data.
The north-east has received 20 per cent less rainfall than normal so far, and the north-west some 68 per cent less.
The lifeblood of the nearly US$3.5 trillion (S$4.7 trillion) economy, the monsoon brings nearly 70 per cent of the rain India needs to water farms and refill reservoirs and aquifers.
In the absence of irrigation, nearly half the farmland in the world’s second-biggest producer of rice, wheat and sugar depends on the annual rain that usually runs until September.
“The monsoon’s progress is stalled. It has weakened. But when it revives and becomes active, it can erase the rain deficit in a short burst,” an IMD official told Reuters.
The official sought anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Heatwave conditions are likely to prevail in northern states for a few more days, but temperatures could start coming down from the weekend, the official added.
The maximum temperature in India’s northern states is ranging between 42 deg C and 47.6 deg C, about 4 deg C to 9 deg C above normal, the IMD data showed. REUTERS
