-Hindustan Times India’s June-September monsoon, the lifeblood of Asia’s third-largest economy, will most likely be “deficient” this year with the met department downgrading its forecast from 93% to 88%, earth sciences minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday. The India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) revision -- which had forecast “below normal” monsoon in April -- will potentially toughen challenges for the Narendra Modi government already battling a farm crisis triggered by unseasonal rains in...
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Narendra Modi’s Bharat challenge: Low production, dipping income -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Dealing with the farm distress, while simultaneously creating enough non-farm job opportunities, is going to be a tough task. Call it bad luck or otherwise, the Narendra Modi government’s first year in office hasn’t been a really great one for agriculture and rural incomes. To start with, rainfall was deficient in both the south-west (June-September) and the north-east (October-December) monsoon seasons by over 12 per cent and 33 per...
More »Why Two Weather Forecasters Differ on Their Prediction for the Monsoons This Year -Atul Dev
-CaravanMagazine.in “If I see clouds forming in the sky, the first question that comes to my head is whether I have forecasted it,” BP Yadav, head of the weather forecasting division at the India Meteorological Department (IMD), told me when I met him on 25 April. Yadav’s office, on the second floor of the IMD building that overlooks the Lodhi Gardens in Delhi, is equipped with three LCD monitors that present...
More »If it doesn’t rain -Shweta Saini & Ashok Gulati
-The Indian Express We need a contingency plan that combines real-time technology with robust insurance and easy credit. On April 22, 2015 the Indian Met Department (IMD) released its first forecast for the upcoming monsoon rains, saying it is likely to be below normal, at 93 per cent of the long period average (LPA). Only a week before that, on April 15, a private forecaster, Skymet, had predicted normal rains (102...
More »Deepening agrarian crisis endangers food security
A recent press release from the Ministry of Agriculture shows that the area affected by recent rains and hailstorms is estimated to be 189.81 lakh hectares (on 24 April 2015), which is nearly double the total area affected that was earlier estimated on 16 April 2015. (See the link below). Experts argue that such extreme weather events may severely damage food economy of the nation, apart from breaking the spirit...
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