Dry efforts
Flash droughts parch large tracts of lands and ruin crops, but they do not feature in India’s disaster management regime
India must take note of devastations caused by flash droughts
BY THE time you read this story, India would be, in all likelihood, celebrating an above normal monsoon with the government rushing to release an advance estimate of a bumper harvest. But while doing this, it would skip a significant weather phenomenon that has for years wreaked havoc on farmers: flash drought. Quite unlike the conventional drought that takes months or even years to develop, the onset of a flash drought is sudden. It occurs during a dry spell in the monsoon season and has a devastating impact on agriculture.
A flash drought can develop in as little time as 10 to 15
days, says Vimal Mishra, associate professor at the department of civil engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar. He has co-authored a paper titled “Dominance of summer monsoon flash droughts in India” published recently in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The paper characterises a flash drought by rapid onset and intensification caused by high evapotranspiration due to extreme heat, wind and high incoming solar radiation. “The duration of a flash drought depends on how long a monsoon break lasts. If it does not rain for long, the flash drought will last long. However, it recovers after rains start again. The recovery depends on the intensity of the rainfall,” says Mishra. It can also occur due to delayed onset of summer monsoon. The impact it has is much larger than can be imagined.
Take the case of Madhya Pradesh. The state is India’s largest soybean producer, but as per the Indian Institute of Soybean Research, Indore, it lost 15 per cent of the crop this July due to nearly a monthlong dry spell. Though most districts here reported above the normal rainfall that month, some like Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh, Hoshangabad and Shivpuri recorded a deficit rainfall by 40 per cent. Rains returned in August, but it poured so heavily that farmers again suffered crop damage.
Similarly, nine of Odisha’s 30 districts reported 40 per cent deficit rainfall. The dry spell ended in August, but by then farmers were already distraught—one committed suicide fearing loss of kharif crop.
By July this year, that is half way through the monsoon, at least 234 of the 685 districts in India had suffered deficit rainfall. By the first week of September, when India recorded 10 per cent above the normal rainfall, 144 districts reported shortages.
Each year, flash droughts have affected 10 to 15 per cent area under rice and maize since 1951, says the IIT study, which for the first time recorded the extent, frequency and nature of flash droughts in India. It says the country suffered 39 flash droughts between 1951 and 2018, four of which were major. The worst was in 1979 affecting northcentral India and the IndoGangetic Plains, followed by 2001, 1958 and 1986, in the order of intensity, and affecting northern and central India (see ‘An unrecognised crisis,’ p22).
The study says 82 per cent of the flash droughts occurred during monsoon and in central northeast, northeast, northwest, west central regions that fall in the core monsoon zone. Only the Himalayan and peninsular regions experienced more flash droughts in non-monsoon seasons.
The US first recognised the weather event in the early 2000s. It created the US Drought Monitor, and in 2012 recorded the expansion of abnormally dry conditions from 30 per cent of the continent in May to over 60 per cent by August. This had a significant impact on agriculture. Now, the US declares a flash drought if, within four weeks, the US Drought Monitor records changes in at least two of the five categories—abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought. Meanwhile, China and Australia have shifted their focus of research on flash droughts.
But India does not even recognise a flash drought. So when farmers suffer crop losses they cannot approach the government for compensation. “A flash drought severely impacts kharif crops and can affect grain formation when crops have already been sown,” says food and agriculture policy analyst Devinder Sharma. Flash droughts have become quite frequent now, says K J Joy, coordinator of Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts. “Gaps between rains are increasing and crops fail because of prolonged dry spells, causing immense psychological stress to farmers. Besides other things, their worry is whether to re-sow the crop or wait for another few days for the rains,” he says.
Worse, India’s drought management plan is outdated and does not take into account the changing rainfall patterns, says G V Ramanjaneyulu, executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, a research organisation in Telangana. “There is the tendency to treat drought with relief schemes, adopted after crops are already destroyed. It is handled by the revenue department. This needs to change to a preventive model. All departments should work together
MADHYA PRADESH, INDIA’S LARGEST SOYBEAN PRODUCER, LOST 15 PER CENT OF THE CROP DUE TO A NEARLY MONTH-LONG DRY SPELL IN JULY. SEVERAL DISTRICTS HERE REPORTED DEFICIT RAINFALL BY 40 PER CENT
to help farmers adapt. Insurance schemes like Fasal Bima Yojana must take flash drought into consideration,” he says.
India does not have a standard terminology for short-term droughts, says Anil Kumar Gupta, undersecretary at the Union agriculture ministry. “It takes us two to three months to declare a drought,” he says. Joy suggests policymakers to recognise flash drought as a subcategory of drought because it has different implications—farmers get no time to react to it. “Since rapid depletion in soil moisture leads to flash drought, soil moisture should be the main indicator to identify a flash drought,” suggests Akshay Deoras, independent meteorologist and researcher at the University of Reading, UK.