Rain-watching

MONSOONS ARE WELCOME. Coming as it does after a scorching summer and serious worries over drought, the forecast made by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) that the country is awaiting yet another `normal' southwest monsoon is cause for some cheer. For, it is this spell, between June and September, which accounts for nearly 80 per cent of the country's rainfall. That optimism is in the air is evident from the initial responses to the IMD's forecast from the Union Agriculture Ministry as well as by marketmen. The upward revision of the foodgrain production target for the year 2001-02 by the former and the buying interest fuelled in the stock markets are indications, if at all any are required, of the continuing impact of monsoons on the national economy. There is no taking away the fact that the IMD has made considerable progress in the tricky task of predicting monsoons. However, given the known fallibility of statistical forecasting techniques, especially so in the highly complicated case of weather forecasting, there is also a case to temper the cheer and to look at what the IMD has said in a detached manner. Also to be reckoned with is the purpose behind making these forecasts, their limitations and implications for the country's planners and administrators. At best, the forecast should put to rest apprehensions of a monsoon failure. This, however, does not mean that rainfall will be aplenty or that the prospects of drought have receded.

Bearing in mind a few concepts that are a part of weather forecasting techniques would be appropriate. Essentially a broadbrush picture of what the months ahead would portend on the meteorological front, the forecasts provide aggregate expectations. Yet, crucial imponderables persist. The most important being the variations over space and time. Another factor is that the forecast is made for the country as a whole and not in disaggregated terms that can lend themselves to meaningful local predictions. Thus, while the long range forecast may hold true for the country as a whole, there still remains a difficulty in anticipating its impact at regional or divisional levels. For instance, though the last year had indeed recorded a statistically `normal' monsoon, as many as 71 districts received deficient rainfall for the second year running. For the coming year, the IMD has predicted a lower possibility of a repeat failure in these districts, but has not ruled out the possibility totally. In this regard, the attempts made since 1999 by the IMD to issue broad region-wise forecasts - for northwest India, the Peninsula and northeast India - is a welcome step in that it narrows, even if to a limited extent, this spatial factor.

It is at the larger level of planning and administrative preparedness that the techniques developed within the country over the past several decades in long-range forecasting require to be used judiciously. The long-standing surmise that the economy is a gamble of the monsoons should not be made a repeated rhetoric, given the advances made by India in forecasting. With the broad picture now available, preparedness should be the key factor which determines progress. Targeting annual foodgrain productions based on rain forecasts, as is being done, may be a good starting point and a continuation with the past. However, other factors such as possible changes in cropping pattern, which are determined by both economic and non-economic forces, should also be reckoned with. Given the fact that the IMD carries out the forecasts on a regular basis, it would also be in order to re-evaluate the overall situation when the mid-season forecast arrives in August, based on the performance of the monsoon during the next two months. Given the grim indications of the possibility of drought and water shortages, there should be no letup in the administrative machinery in its preparedness to steer through difficult situations that may manifest themselves in several pockets across the country.

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