INDIA said it was ready to cope with a potential drought after the weather office reported annual monsoon rains critical to the nation’s economy had been “scanty” in food-growing areas.
The pounding rains that sweep the subcontinent from June to September are dubbed the “economic lifeline” of India, which is one of the world’s leading producers of rice, sugar, wheat and cotton.
“The government is in full readiness to address any situation that may arise due to any rainfall anomalies,” Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s office said in a statement.
“Contingency plans have been prepared by the department of agriculture and will be rolled out in the areas which continue to receive low rainfall,” the statement added.
The weather office said in its latest weekly bulletin that the rains had been “deficient” across 76 per cent of India while in such bread-basket states as Punjab and Haryana they had been “scanty”.
Agriculture contributes about 15 per cent to India’s gross domestic product but only 40 per cent of farms are irrigated.
The livelihoods of hundreds of millions in the country of 1.2 billion people depend on the farming sector.
The prime minister’s office said India’s 84 major reservoirs were filling up but were still only at 61 per cent of last year’s levels.
Collection of drinking water was being given top priority.
“There has been a reduction of around eight million hectares (19.7 million acres) in the crop area sown compared to last year,” it noted.
The statement said patchy rains might not affect crops of food staples such as rice but warned that cereal production could falter.
A drought in 2009 – the worst in nearly four decades – sent food prices rocketing and caused huge hardship for the country’s poor.
