Monsoon revives, eases crop fears

New Delhi, July 22: A revival of monsoon rains across eastern India over the past week has reduced the area dogged by scanty rainfall and allayed concerns about the paddy crop. India’s land area that has received normal or excess cumulative rainfall since the start of the monsoon in early June has increased to 87 per cent from 80 per cent last week, data released today by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows. Vast tracts of the eastern states got scanty rain last week (July 9-16). But this week’s revival, driven by the movement of a low pressure zone from the northern Bay of Bengal over parts of eastern India, has significantly reduced the worrying deficit, a senior agrometeorological expert said. Among Bengal’s 19 districts, those that got scanty rainfall dropped from nine last week to two — Bankura and Calcutta — today. Only seven of the 38 districts of Bihar have recorded scanty rainfall, in contrast to 28 last week. “This revival is going to help rice crops in the east,” said Kamlesh Kumar Singh, an agrometeorologist at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, a government lab in New Delhi that issues forecasts for up to five days. “Things look much better now than they did last week,” Singh said. “Although some districts still show rainfall deficits, the improved rainfall is likely to have accelerated paddy sowing in many areas.” The Union agricultural ministry said today that the cumulative rice sowing area has climbed to 154 lakh hectares, nearly 40 lakh hectares more than the paddy area measured last Friday. The dry spell of last week had caused concern about rice yields because it had coincided with the sowing and transplantation of rice seedlings. But scientists had also said that a revival before July 25 would minimise the risk of yield loss. The IMD data shows that the cumulative monsoon rainfall over India is near normal so far, only one per cent below the long period average. The revival over the past week has led to significant changes. Hooghly, which had a deficit of 81 per cent last week, received five per cent above average rainfall this week. Malda with a 73 per cent deficit last week also moved into the positive zone with a 12 per cent above average rainfall this week. Gangetic Bengal, which has received rainfall about 30 per cent above normal, is among six of India’s 36 meteorological subdivisions that have seen excess rainfall — more than 20 per cent of the average.