While the prayers had been answered and the Monsoon 2016 turned out to be normal ending at 97 percent, the other side of the story has a different tale to tell. As far as the geographical distribution of last years’ rains are concerned, they were erratic.
Major agricultural belts remained rain deficient. In fact, several areas witnessed drought like conditions causing farmers to worry about the rains. Almost the entire Northwest India had observed deficient rainfall.
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Monsoon was weak over major areas. While Punjab was deficient by 28 percent, Haryana was rainfall deficient by 27 percent. On the other hand, East Uttar Pradesh observed a rainfall deficiency of 12 percent, West Uttar Pradesh was 17 percent rain deficient.
As far as East India is concerned, Bihar, one of the most important agricultural belts fared much better at 3 percent rainfall deficiency.
Areas including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh along with Marathwada, Vidarbaha and Chhattisgarh witnessed good rains. However, excessive rains were observed within a small time frame resulting in crop damage in many areas. Thus, the distribution and timeliness of rainfall was not adequate enough for crops to be benefited.
In fact, during the Monsoon season, there was a time when both rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh were flooded which is why despite of abundant rains, crops were damaged due to floods. Also, the rainfall spread was uneven.
Moving down to South Peninsula, Kerala was most rain deficient at 34 percent. Meanwhile, South Interior Karnataka and Coastal Karnataka were rain deficient by 21 percent. Tamil Nadu observed very little rains at 19 percent.
In a nutshell, in spite of normal Monsoon in the year 2016, it was not good in terms of agriculture and the farmers along with the Indian economy did suffer to quite an extent.
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