India’s annual monsoon rains have swept across the country about two weeks ahead of schedule, their earliest for over a century. Subhash Chander Bhan, the director of the India Meteorological Department, said that widespread rainfall cooled northern India, with the region’s high temperature today pegged at 93F (34F), 11F (5C) below normal.
The Good Effect
Farmers in India sow rice, soybean and groundnut in June and July. The monsoon usually hits Kerala on June 1 and retreats in September.
“The onset over Kerala in 2008 is likely to be on May 29 with a model error of four days,” the weather office said in a statement.
It said the south-west monsoon advanced into the Bay of Bengal and the north Andaman Sea on May 12, almost eight days in advance.
Rice exporters in India, who have petitioned the government to ease restrictions on basmati rice exports, were jubilant.
“It is a superb news. The whole panic of rice shortage will end,” Anil K Mittal, chairman and managing director of KRBL Ltd, a leading rice exporter told Reuters.
Farmers depend heavily on monsoon rains as only 40 percent of the cultivable land is irrigated.
“Good monsoon will lead to better yield in rice,” said Vijay Setia, president of the All India Rice Exporters’ Association.
“Rice is a water-intensive crop and a good monsoon will also help arrest the falling water table in major growing areas.”
The agriculture ministry last month forecast India’s rice production at a record 95.68 million tonnes in the crop year to June 2008.
India was the world’s biggest exporter of rice last year after Thailand but concerns of rising inflation encouraged the government to tax exports of basmati and ban overseas sales of other grades of rice.
Dwindling stocks and export curbs by countries such as India have helped rice prices rise this year, but on Wednesday, U.S. prices fell over 3 percent on expectations of higher global output this year.
The forecast of good monsoon rains and their early arrival would also help replenish ground water, which has receded at an alarming 75 centimetres annually in some regions, scientists say.
Setia said 5,000 litres of water are used to produce one kg of rice.
In April, the weather office said the monsoon was expected to be near-normal, or 99 percent of the long-term average.
The Bad Effect
Monsoon floods hit India
CALCUTTA, India — Indian military and civil authorities used speed boats to ferry food and drinking water to hundreds of thousands of villagers cut off by monsoon floods that have killed at least 27 people in the past week, officials said Wednesday.
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Local authorities also sought to use air force helicopters to drop supplies to more than 50,000 people stranded in nearly 200 villages in West Bengal state where the flooded Keleghai river has cut off road links, said Kalyan Mitra, a district official. The affected villages in West Midnapore district are about 170 kilometers (105 miles) west of Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal state.
Flood waters have left another 200,000 people marooned in nearly 300 villages in neighboring Orissa state, said Manmohan Samal, the state revenue minister.
Nineteen deaths have been reported from mudslides and house collapses in Arunachal Pradesh state and eight in Assam state in India’s remote northeast in the past week.
However, water has started receding in the worst-hit Lakhimpur district in Assam state following a respite from the rain on Tuesday, allowing hundreds of villagers to return to their homes, said Bhumidar Barman, the state revenue minister.
More than 400,000 people have been affected by floods in two district in northern Assam, Barman said.
Teams of doctors and paramedics have left for 100 makeshift relief camps in the two districts in Assam state to prevent the outbreak of malaria, dengue fever, cholera and other waterborne diseases, he said.
Assam is prone to flooding. Last year, millions of people were forced to temporarily abandon their homes after floods.
Monsoon rains usually hit India from June to September.
The rains are crucial for farmers whose crops feed hundreds of millions of people, but they also bring massive destruction across the country.
