DELAYED MONSOON
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Met Dept expects 'good monsoon'
Published on Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 08:12, Updated on Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 14:30 in India section
Tags: Monsoon, Met Department , New Delhi
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New Delhi: Delayed monsoon is giving the government a big headache with India likely to suffer a major agriculture crisis if the rain gods do not smile soon.
But the Met Department expects monsoon to pick up in parts of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka over the next few days.
In fact the Met Department has been claiming that the country still expect a good monsoon.
"For many years June rainfall has been bad but monsoon turned out normal. In 1926, we had the worst June rainfall, deficient by 48 per cent that year the overall monsoon was above normal, 107 per cent. So we can expect good monsoons even though at present things are not progressing as per the normal pattern," said Deputy Director General of Met Department A Mazumdar.
But delayed and deficient monsoons may send food stocks plummeting and will put at risk the livelihood of millions of farmers.
Over 60 per cent of Indian agriculture is rain fed and over 70 per cent of the people depend on land for their livelihood.
Madhya Pradesh is grappling with a rainfall deficiency of 92 per cent, Chhattisgarh 91 per cent, Marathwada 82 per cent, Saurashtra 100 per cent, Orissa 43 per cent, Jharkhand 54 per cent, Bihar 81 per cent and Uttar Pradesh is facing a deficit of 85 per cent.
In fact Madhya Pradesh also turning to the gods with the state government organising Som Yagnas across the state to please the rain gods.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan performed the yagna in Ujjain on Monday.
The state govt has ear-marked lakhs of rupees for such rituals. In 2007, Rs 64 lakh were spent to see if such rituals could usher in the monsoons.
But the state is also grappling with severe water crisis that has sparked off violence with three people being killed in a scuffle over water in May.
With northern Andhra Pradesh still recording an average day temperature of 39 degrees and almost negligible rainfall, the state authorities are worried.
They have decided to call on the rain gods for help. The state government has asked over 200 temples to perform poojas from June 24 for three to five days for divine intervention.
Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa is on a pilgrimage to Tamil Nadu to offer prayers for abundant rains in his state.
Yediyurappa visited the famous Lord Nataraja temple in Tamil Nadu's Chidambaram and Kumbakonam, and Lord Saneeswarar temple in Puducherry. With the monsoon failing to bring rains, water storage in major dams in Karnataka has come down to a new low and is causing concerns about the prospects of crops this season.
Further delay in the monsoons could result in states reducing the supply of water for irrigation and conserving it for drinking purposes instead, as the individual states manage the water levels in their respective reservoirs.
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I think pray will not help. Actually we are playing with environment. Today we are developing big- buildings but at
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more and more weather uncertainities will occur in future also.govt has done little to save water over the years.failed to
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The IMDâs statistics are fantastic. But the seeds and crop will not understand those.
I really pity
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God helps those who help themselves!! Nice to see our politicians looking very pious and seeking divine help for a
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Our Met Department do not have any scientists who can make reliable forecasts. They are generally people appointed through recommendations
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