Recurring shadow of drought
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 09, 2012 -

With monsoon playing hide and seek, a worried farmer looks at his parched paddy field under Imphal West district. With the shadow of drought casting following failure of rainfall and lack of irrigation facilities, many farmers are shelling out extra money to draw water from canals with the help of water pumps :: Pix - Hueiyen Lanpao

Former Finance Minister of Pranab Mukherjee, who recently resigned to contest for the post of President, once described the monsoon as the country's real Finance Minister.

And it was not without reason. In fact, it is the strength of monsoons that helps to shape the economic prospects of the country.

With agriculture making upto about 15 percent of the country's economy and more than 70 percent of the Indian population depending on agriculture and other allied activities for a living, a poor monsoon means failure of crop production and further rise of food prices.

Normally, farmers depend heavily on monsoon to irrigate their crops sown during the months of monsoon from June to August. But this time around, India's monsoon rains were said to be 31 percent below average so far and farmers in several parts of the country including Manipur are now worry about a looming drought.

It is said that a place can be declared drought affected if the rate of rainfall received does not reach 75 percent of the normal rainfall rate.

Over the past fifty years, India has received an average rainfall of 89 centimeters during the four-month monsoon season that starts in June and the monsoon is classified as normal if the country receives anywhere from 96% to 104% of the 50-year average rainfall.

As in other parts of the country, agricultural activities in Manipur are largely dependent on monsoon as there is no adequate irrigational facility in many areas.

So, shortage of rainfall is spells disaster for a rice growing state like Manipur. With seasonal rain continuing to play hide and seek, farmers in the state, who are yet to recover themselves from the impact of one of the worst drought situations experienced in Manipur in 2009, have started worrying whether they would be able to sow the paddy seeds and reap the fruit in time.

Though the officials in Agriculture Department have ruled out possibility of drought in Manipur, claiming that state has so far received 69 percent of rainfall and it would not be a wise judgement to declare Manipur drought affected because of the 6 percent shortfall, Agriculture Minister Md Abdul Nasir has noted that the quantity of rainfall received this time has been very less and if there is no adequate rainfall till July 15, the Chief Minister would be consulted for declaring drought in the state.

Even though such assurances may assuage the fear of the poor farmers, we strongly feel that it's time for the Government, the Department concerned and the people to think over the root causes of recurring drought like situation in the state.

With the kind of sweeping climatic changes taking place and the resultant erratic rainfall being experienced over the years, rushing to declare drought every time the monsoon fails to keep its annual date, could never be a permanent solution to the problem.

What we need is a long term policy and programme to mitigate recurrence of drought in Manipur.

Hope this point would not be missed at the time of drafting the State Agriculture Policy which our honourable Agriculture Minister has assured to come up soon.