Drought is a climatic condition, which is characterized by lack of precipitation and dryness. Drought prone areas are identified by a deficit of rainfall received in a particular area. The parameters to identify drought prone areas vary depending on the natural climatic conditions.
Drought can be defined as the deficiency in precipitation over an extended period, usually a season or more, resulting in a water shortage causing adverse impacts on vegetation, animals, and/or people (NOAA, 2008).
It is a temporary anomaly, unlike aridity, which is a permanent climatic condition. Droughts are different from other natural disasters as they are slow-onset shocks with prolonged and potentially devastating consequences.
The impacts are generally difficult to quantify as the duration may range from months to years and no single indicator can identify precisely the onset and severity of the event. Dry conditions occur due to different reasons thus making it difficult to outline a particular definition of drought.
There are four approaches based on which drought has been classified to reflect different perspectives (Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, 2009).
- Meteorological drought is usually defined based on the dryness and the duration of the dry period with respect to long term average – 25 per cent or less to the long term average is normal, 26-50 per cent is moderate and more than 50 per cent is severe.
- Agricultural drought links various characteristics of meteorological drought to agriculture impacts like precipitation shortages, soil water deficit, reduced ground water level needed for irrigation etc. It is identified by four consecutive weeks of meteorological drought with a weekly rainfall of 50 mm or less from and six such consecutive weeks for the rest of the year. Almost 80 per cent of crops in India are planted in the Kharif season.
- Hydrological drought refers to persistently low water volumes in streams, rivers and reservoirs. Such conditions arise even in times of average (or above average) precipitation when increased usage of water diminishes the reserves. This results in significant societal impacts.
The drought-prone areas of the country are confined to the arid, semi-arid, and sub-humid regions of peninsular and western India. Around 68 per cent of the area in India is found to be prone to drought to different degrees. 35 per cent of the country’s area which receives annual rainfall between 750 mm and 1125 mm is considered drought prone while 33 per cent receiving less than 750 mm is considered chronically drought prone (Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, 2016).
Impact of drought disasters
The impacts of drought are multidimensional because the adequate availability of water is an integral factor for agricultural production, and a country’s ability to produce goods and services. Some of the direct impacts of drought are reduction in agricultural production and heightened food insecurity among the poor and vulnerable sections, lack of access to clean water, depletion of water resources, damage to ecosystems and biodiversity, fire hazards etc.
The indirect impacts are reduction of income for farmers, increase in food and fodder prices, defaults from agricultural loans causing debt and bondage, farmer suicides, social conflicts over minimal resources etc. Displacement of people, migration and loss of livelihood are also some of the very common indirect impacts. Thus, droughts have a cascading impact on all levels of social strata, which could be environmental, economic or social.
The 2016 Drought Management Manual and the Crisis Management Plan
Policies and frameworks undergo amendments routinely and one such is the revision Manual for Drought Management, 2009 that was amended in 2016. The revised manual states that the central and state governments shall do the monitoring of drought by following parameters which indicates the onset of drought like situation – rainfall, remote sensing based vegetative indices, crop situation indices, hydrological indices, ground truth variation which is further elaborated into 13 sub-points (Indian Drought Manual, 2016).
The intensity of drought, or a drought disaster shall be declared depending on the values of three indicators. This move was met with criticism from states like Karnataka as the new norms are technically extensive and too stringent to be practical.
Furthermore, the ‘moderate’ category of drought is being omitted from the manual, which means the drought prone areas would come under two categories which is either ‘normal’ or ‘severe’. Thus, states are eligible for financial assistance from the centre only in case of severe drought.
The Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare (DAC&FW) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare is the apex body for formulation of policies and various institutional structures at national and state level for drought management.
Drought Management Cell (DMC) of the department helps gather information from diverse sources, monitor drought conditions, issue advisories, coordinate Ministries within the Central and State Government and other concerned agencies to mitigate the effects of drought. The department also updates and reviews the Crisis Management Plan (CMP) every year.
CMP focuses on management interventions required during the time of drought disasters. It is a programme that delineates roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, including Central and State Governments and their agencies in managing the calamity.
Some important features of the Management Plan includes: Crisis Management Framework (CMF) aimed at identification of fundamental crisis situations like phases of crisis, magnitude, impact, triggers and strategic response mechanism.
It is also envisaged that a Crisis Management Group (CMG) for drought management would come up to manage the various phases of drought at central, state and district level. Another important feature is the creation of separate Drought Monitoring Centers (DMCs) at state level which would report to the State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMA).
Unfortunately, the problem for drought management is not the lack of policies and framework but the paucity of proper formulation and implementation. The recent episodes of drought disasters of unprecedented drought in south Indian states are an indicator of lack of efficient management strategy.
In the year 2016, Tamil Nadu was monsoon deficient by close to 62 per cent, Kerala faced its worst drought in 115 years affecting more than 17,000 ha of agricultural land and Andhra Pradesh recorded rainfall deficient by 23 per cent. Thus, strengthening and enhancing the institutional mechanisms for monitoring and reporting of drought at national and state level is essential.
Along with effective policies, development in technology through enhanced scientific research could foster the already available monitoring and early warning systems of drought conditions. The use of remote sensing to provide timely meteorological data and information like soil moisture, reservoir storage etc. to farmers would help in mitigating the economic and social distress caused by drought.
This could be done through media management and use of social networking system. It would also enhance the timely execution of District Agriculture Contingency Plan (DACP). Some other measures that could be taken up in grassroots level are investing in water harvesting system technologies and availing subsidised drought prone seed varieties to farmers.
Moreover, building drought adaptation strategies is also inevitable as drought conditions and unpredictable shift in rainfall pattern is projected to increase due to climate change. Food security of a nation is deeply interlinked with drought as it poses as a constant threat to reduction of agricultural produce and subsequent food shortage.
It affects the whole dimension of agriculture- production, availability, stability, accessibility and utilization. Thus, it is very important for an agrarian nation like India to be drought smart and drought resilient to sustain the huge population.
All of the preventive and mitigating measures for drought disasters require coordinated efforts and systematic communication between the central and state governments, scientific institutions, relevant agencies and farmers alike.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.