Warning bells

Appa Garud (60), a farmer in Maharashtra’s Satara district, 300 km south of Mumbai, is on the edge of despair. The jowar seeds he had sown last month have all withered due to lack of water. He now has to buy fresh seeds. “But where will the money come from?” he asked.

Appa Garud (60), a farmer in Maharashtra’s Satara district, 300 km south of Mumbai, is on the edge of despair. The jowar seeds he had sown last month have all withered due to lack of water. He now has to buy fresh seeds. “But where will the money come from?” he asked.

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Millions of farmers across the country are asking the same question.

As the spectre of a failed monsoon looms large, especially over north India, there is fear that the resultant rural slowdown will pull down India’s growth rate to less than the projected 7 per cent in 2009-10.

Rural India accounts for a large part of the demand for a variety of goods, ranging from scooters and motorcycles to
televisions and shampoos. A demand slowdown will affect industrial production, hit urban India and retard the incipient economic recovery.

It will also result in a spurt in the inflation rate and upset the government’s plans of rolling out a guaranteed foodgrain supply scheme for poor families under the proposed Food Security Act.

The southwest monsoon — crucial for sowing summer crops like paddy, oilseeds, sugarcane, cotton and pulses — is still below strength. At 92.2 mm between June 1 and July 1, it was an alarmingly 46 per cent below normal.

However, Indian Meteorological Department director Medha Khole said it would recover by next week, except in some pockets of north India.

Surjit Bhalla, managing director of Oxus Research and Investments, said a failed monsoon could pull down overall growth by 0.5 per cent.

“The picture will be clear in the next few weeks,” he said.

The government has ruled out food crisis.

“There is no shortage of foodgrains in the country,” a spokesman at the ministry of agriculture said. The country has rice and wheat stocks of 29.75 million tonnes and 24.09 million tonnes respectively – enough to tide over any shortfall this
year.

Already, there are signs that farm yields could fall.

“The sowing area this year has been much less than last year because of the late arrival and deficiency of the monsoon,” a senior official at the agriculture ministry told Hindustan Times.

In central and western India, the monsoon is already delayed by five weeks. This has pushed back the sowing season window in north India, especially in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh as these states receive rainfall much after those in other parts of the country.

“There are two points to note: July remains the key month for sowing, but the build-up in stocks of rice and wheat will provide the government a cushion,” said Rohit Malkani, economist, Citibank India.

Meanwhile, farmers like Garud as well as economists, government officials and India Inc are keeping their fingers crossed.

(With inputs from Hindustan Times’ state bureaux)