Chapter 4 Drought, its Impacts and Management: Scenario in India

Abstract

While Erratic Distribution of Monsoon is the main cause of abnormal monsoon, the consequences of Early Withdrawal of Monsoon are generally quite serious and can create disastrous situations for the drought-prone areas of the country. It is this intrinsic variability of the rainfall over India, in both time and space that makes India, especially the drier regions thereof, vulnerable to droughts. Although no part of India is immune to the adverse impacts of drought, the arid and ,semi-arid regions in the western, northern and peninsular parts of the country experience more frequent droughts, at times leading to a crippling impact on the national economy. The Indian economy, thus, has been described as a “gamble of monsoon” (Venkateswarlu, 2010). A look at the rainfall departure¹ and the corresponding food-grain production (Table 1) in India from 2000 to 2009 reveals that in the drought years of 2002 and 2009 the All India rainfall departure was −19.2% and −21.8%, respectively, leading to a drastic fall in food-grain production by 13.4 and 6.9%, respectively, as compared to the previous years, which received good monsoon rains.

Citation

Sarkar, J. (2011), "Chapter 4 Drought, its Impacts and Management: Scenario in India", Shaw, R. and Nguyen, H. (Ed.) Droughts in Asian Monsoon Region (Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 67-85. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2040-7262(2011)0000008010