August has begun with reports of devastating floods across the country. From Assam and Bihar to Gujarat and Maharashtra, it seems as if concerns about a third consecutive year of scanty rainfall might be allayed – and replaced instead with the more abiding concern of flood management.
The India Meteorological Department also said that after a shaky start, India now has only 9% deficit rain. This year is certainly better than 2015, when the monsoon season ended in September with a 14% deficit across the country.
But a closer look at rainfall data for the months of June and July 2016 suggests a slightly more complicated picture.
Take Gujarat. Five people died in flash floods in southern Gujarat on Monday. Heavy rain is expected to continue. The state, however, continues to have deficit rain. The worst affected regions of Kutch and Saurashtra continue to report scanty rainfall, as marked in yellow. While Surendranagar and Anand both received 60% less than normal rain as of August 3, Kutch has reported a 72% deviation from normal.
The drought in Gujarat has been heavily under-reported. With the state government in denial, those dependent on agriculture seem to have fallen under the radar.
Up north, Lahaul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh has had only 15% of its normal rain so far, and Kinnaur only 37%. Most other districts in the state have had steady rain through June and July. As IANS notes, most agricultural activity in Himachal Pradesh is rainfed and more than two thirds of the state is employed in this sector.
More than half of Punjab has had deficient rain so far. Firozpur, marked in yellow on the Pakistan border, has received 77% deficit rain. On the other hand, Kapurthala in blue which lies just to its north, has had 47% more rain than usual.
Even as floods wreaked havoc in Assam and the Brahmaputra breached its embankments once again, Meghalaya to its south was relatively dry. South Garo Hills had the highest deficiency across the country, with less than 89% of its usual rain as of July 27. East Garo Hills, just to its north, had 105% of normal rain.
The empirical situation in at least three states in the North East is unclear, as the IMD does not seem to have more than two or three rainfall recording stations each in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland. Large parts of these states appear blank on the department’s maps.
Hiding in averages
None of this is new. Figures for average rainfall will always hide nuances across the country. Even in a year when India has had regular rain, or more than regular rain, there have been parts that received less than normal rain.
The political boundaries of a state naturally do not align with the physical features of the land, so it is not surprising either that a single state can bear witness to both extremes of rainfall. What is worrying, as an article in The Third Pole points out, is that even those places which are flooding now have still recorded an overall below average rainfall in this monsoon.
One of the defining factors of climate change, the article reminds us, is an increase in extreme weather events – intense dry spells followed by intense wet ones, but with no moderation in between. This, it seems increasingly clear, is what the central and state governments need to prepare themselves for.