42% of India's land area under drought, 500 mn people severely affected

Current Affairs

About 42% of India’s land area is facing drought, with 6% exceptionally dry--four times the spatial extent of drought last year, according to data for the week ending March 26, 2019, from the Drought Early Warning System (DEWS), a real-time drought monitoring platform.

Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, parts of the North-East, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are the worst hit. These states are home to 500 million people, almost 40% of the country’s population.

While the central government has not declared drought anywhere so far, the state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan have declared many of their districts as drought-hit.

“Before monsoon, which is still far away, the next two or three months are going to be difficult in many of these regions,” Vimal Mishra, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar, and the developer of DEWS, told IndiaSpend.

Failed monsoon rains are the primary reason for the current situation. The North-East monsoon, also known as ‘post-monsoon rainfall’ (October-December) that provides 10-20% of India’s rainfall, was deficient by 44% in 2018 from the long-term normal of 127.2 mm, as per data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

This compounded the rainfall deficit in the South-West (SW) monsoon (June-September) that provides 80% of India’s rainfall, which fell short by 9.4% in 2018--close to the 10% deficit range when the IMD declares a drought.


 India has experienced widespread drought every year since 2015, Mishra said, with the exception of 2017...Read More