Agriculture has large dependence and closely related to the weather conditions. The large variability in the yield from time to time has a strong connection with weather parameters like temperature, rainfall, humidity and sunshine hours. The crucial period for Rabi crop across the northern and central parts is counted from mid-February to March end with possible extension to part of April.
The month of March is seen as having large fluctuations in terms of weather variability. The last three seasons, this month remained deficit with 38%, 47% and 6% in the year 2019, 2018 and 2017 respectively. This year, changing track, the month has ended recording 47% of excess rains.
Complete Northeast India, however, was disappointing with mostly scanty rains resulting deficiency to the tune of 85% in Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura (NMMT). Down south, Tamilnadu also remained parched with a shortfall of 80%. But the silver lining for the month is bountiful rains over Northern and Eastern parts of the country. Punjab and Haryana which nearly starved last three consecutive years became rain surplus to the tune of 257% and 471% respectively. Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan received 3-4 times of their normal rainfall.
A little darker aspect of these rains has been the damage to the standing crops in many pockets across the country. Truly speaking no more rains are needed to capitalize on the bumper yield. Harvest is either in progress or farmers are enthusiastic to commence it soon.