By reiterating its April forecast of a normal monsoon, the Met office has infused both relief and confidence in an economy that is, all of a sudden, coping with rising oil prices and a falling rupee. The India Meteorological Department’s second long range forecast for 2018 predicts June-September rainfall at 97 per cent of its 50-year long period average (LPA) of 890 mm. The Monetary Policy Committee, which meets next week, can draw comfort from the fact that food inflation is not a threat, while growth impulses are likely to receive a boost.

On the distribution of rainfall over the monsoon months, the IMD anticipates a slackening in rainfall mid-season, perhaps owing to weak Indian Ocean Dipole conditions. In spatial terms, peninsular India is expected to get 95 per cent of its LPA, while the North-East may receive only 93 per cent. The IMD has forecast normal rain for North-West and Central India, while other forecasters have predicted a deficit in the former. The IMD seems to get these estimates right most of the time, but concedes that in six years between 1988 and 2008 the forecast error was more than 10 per cent. The 2002 drought, caused by the “unexpected sudden warming of sea surface over equatorial central Pacific that started in the month of June...was not predicted by any group in India or abroad,” the IMD says on its website. However, the key is to move to micro-level forecasting, so that exigencies can be anticipated. This has become all the more important in a time of extreme spatial and temporal swings in weather, attributable to climate change. Recent initiatives by Karnataka and Kerala in documenting and monitoring rainfall patterns at the district level should become the norm. Experts have pointed out that monsoons deviate from the LPA in two years out of five, which calls for high levels of preparedness with respect to farm output, water availability for livelihood needs and natural calamities. For now, the southern States can deal with less rain, as the April showers have filled its reservoirs.

The monsoon continues to influence the economy, even as agriculture accounts for just 15 per cent of the GDP. It lifts non-farm rural incomes and with it the demand of half the country’s population. However, a May 2015 Reserve Bank paper points out that a “positive monsoon shock” does not lift farm output to the extent that a “negative shock” reduces it – a pointer to the productivity crisis in agriculture and the absence of the right pricing and marketing incentives. The livestock economy needs a boost for its capacity to insulate farmers from weather and pricing risks that lead to farm distress. India’s agriculture, unlike in the temperate countries, is more responsive to changes in rainfall than temperature. The discourse on global warming should not lose sight of this fact.

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