If rains poor, give farmers more help

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has held out a faint ray of hope by saying the monsoon situation is “worrisome, but not grim.” That, however, is hardly likely to boost the morale of farmers, particularly those in Maharashtra and Karnataka, where rains have been playing truant.

Many of them have already started resowing in July after the first sowing was destroyed as there was no germination due to late rains. Resowing means an additional cost of Rs 3,000 per acre, that includes Rs 1,000 per acre for bullocks/tractors and labour. In the Vidarbha cotton belt, they had just two days of rain since Sunday, and if there is no rain in the next eight to 10 days, the tiny saplings will dry up. Farmers cannot be blamed for being unhappy that the India Meteorological Department appears unable to give them a correct picture about the monsoon.
The meteorological department chief himself is not downbeat, and says there is a one-week window as far as sowing is concerned, and sticks to the original forecast of 28 cm of rain by the end of July. This too, though, will be 14 per cent deficit. The Met department is said to have factored in the El Niño effect. El Niño, simply put, is the movement of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific (starting in Peru) which has important repercussions for weather across the globe.
The Met office has alerted the government that the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra will be the worst affected. In Karnataka, 123 of 176 talukas have been declared drought-hit, while in Maharashtra the state government plans to review the situation on July 15. It has said it is ready to spend Rs 2,625 crore to tackle the drought-like situation in 136 talukas that received less than normal rains. The fear amongst most farmers in Maharashtra is that the bulk of areas affected are non-irrigated, and the money usually goes to help farmers in irrigated areas.
One doesn’t really know if the governments in these two states are ready with a “Plan B”. They say they are, but this is yet to be seen. In Maharashtra, for instance, it has been suggested that if there has to be a second resowing, the government should give seeds and other assistance through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, that is free of cost as many farmers have already spent on resowing. Fodder is another very important requirement. While nature will take its own course in the next eight days, the governments in both these states need to undertake measures on a war footing for resowing of alternate crops, especially fodder crops like bajra and jowar, so that their farmers get some relief in fairly difficult times.