[A paper published last
month blamed global warming for a large increase in the
percentage of the planet affected by extreme summer heat in the last several
decades. And the World Meteorological Organization, a division of the United
Nations, recently warned that climate change
was “projected to increase the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts,
with impacts on many sectors, in particular food, water and energy.”]
By Vikas Bajaj
 |
Kuni Takahashi for The
New York Times
Villagers drive next to
a dried up canal in Muruma, India.
|
MURUMA, India — Vilas
Dinkar Mukane lives halfway around the world from the corn farmers of Iowa, but
the Indian sharecropper is at risk of losing his livelihood for the same
reason: not enough rain.
With the nourishing
downpours of the annual monsoon season down an average of 12 percent across
India and much more in some regions, farmers in this village about 250 miles
east of Mumbai are on the brink of disaster. “If this situation continues, I’ll
lose everything,” said Mr. Mukane, whose soybean, sugarcane and cotton crops
were visibly stunted and wilting in his fields recently. “Nothing can happen
without water.”
Drought has devastated
crops around the world this year, including corn and soybeans in the United
States, wheat in Russia and Australia and soybeans in Brazil and Argentina.
This has contributed to a 6 percent rise in global food prices from June
to July, according to United Nations data.
India is experiencing
its fourth drought in a dozen years, raising concerns about the reliability of
the country’s primary source of fresh water, the monsoon rains that typically
fall from June to October.
Some scientists warn
that such calamities are part of a trend that is likely to intensify in the
coming decades because of climate changes caused by the human release of
greenhouse gases.
A paper published last
month blamed global warming for a large increase in the
percentage of the planet affected by extreme summer heat in the last several
decades. And the World Meteorological Organization, a division of the United
Nations, recently warned that climate change
was “projected to increase the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts,
with impacts on many sectors, in particular food, water and energy.”
Scientists say that in
addition to increasing temperatures, climate change appears to be making India
and its neighbors Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh more vulnerable to erratic
monsoons.
Studies using 130 years
of data show big changes in rainfall in recent decades, said B. N. Goswami,
director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, a government-backed
research organization. Climate models suggest that while overall rainfall
should increase in the coming decades, the region can expect longer dry spells
and more intense downpours — forces that would seem to cancel each other out
but in fact pose new threats.
“Heavy rains are
normally short duration, and therefore the water runs off,” said Dr. Goswami,
who added that more research was needed to fully understand the impact of
climate change on monsoons. “Weak rains are important for recharging
groundwater.”
India is more vulnerable
to disruption from drought than countries like the United States. While
agriculture accounts for just 15 percent of India’s economy, half of its 1.2
billion people work on farms, and many of its poorest citizens already cannot
afford enough food after price increases of 10 percent or more in the last
couple of years.
“These kinds of rainfall
failures have a lot of human effects,” said Yoginder K. Alagh, chairman of the
Institute of Rural Management and a former Indian minister. “A large number of
people don’t get employment. There are acute drinking water problems.”
Food grain and oilseed
production in India could fall up to 12 percent this year as a result of poor
rain, said P. K. Joshi, director for South Asia at
the International Food Policy Research Institute.
The good news is that
the drought is not likely to result in widespread famine. India has more than
76 million tons of wheat, rice and other grain in storage, in part because of
government support for those crops and an export ban put in place in 2008 when
global food prices shot up. But analysts expect prices for dairy, meat, lentils
and vegetables to rise.
Unlike the United
States, where crop insurance and other government programs provide a safety net
for farmers, India offers ad hoc and unpredictable government support,
increasing the risk that legions of farmers will be wiped out.
If it does not rain
soon, Mr. Mukane, 25, who works a field here in Muruma, said he would have to
sell whatever he could to repay banks and lenders 500,000 rupees (about
$9,000), much of it borrowed at an interest rate of 7 percent a month.
Weak monsoon rains were
also an underlying cause of the blackouts that cut power to half
of the country in July. The paucity of water lowered the supply of power from
dams that account for a fifth of electric capacity, even as consumers cranked
up fans and air-conditioners and farmers ran electric pumps to draw water from
wells.
Across the country,
rainfall has been about 12 percent below long-term averages through Sept. 2.
But that broad number belies the acute pain in many parts of the country.
Rainfall here in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra state is down 36 percent.
In parts of the north and west, it is down 13 to 72 percent. At the same time,
heavy rain and flooding have displaced tens of thousands in the eastern state
of Assam.
Experts say the impact
of the poor monsoon rains has been compounded by mismanagement. The chief
minister of Maharashtra, Prithviraj Chavan, recently said that much of the $1.5
billion a year that the state spent on water projects appeared to have been
wasted, with virtually no increase in the amount of irrigated farmland over the
last decade.
Kiran Singh Pal, a
government engineer who manages the irrigation system in the region, said it
was poorly maintained because officials like himself had not been given enough
money and staff. He also said many farmers had received no government water because
so much of it was cornered by a few powerful landowners.
“We have enough water to
irrigate all the fields,” Mr. Pal said. “The problem is we don’t have any
control.”
Mr. Mukane, the
sharecropper, and his neighbors said their problems were heightened because
they received much less water this year from a nearby reservoir, which is so
depleted that it can barely provide drinking water to Aurangabad, a city of 1.2
million.
Federal and state
officials have begun offering small types of relief for hard-hit areas, like
fodder for cattle, cheap diesel fuel and subsidized seeds.
But Bhaurao Bhanudas
Date, a 48-year-old farmer near Muruma, said that what he needed most was
water. He said he expected little to no return from his sugarcane and cotton
crops this year and would have to fall back on the income he earned from
selling fodder and milk from his five cows.
Mr. Mukane said his
father recently went to a temple to pray for rain, taking a pot of river water
as an offering. The family is particularly anxious because Mr. Mukane’s wife is
expecting their first child, and the government usually provides relief only to
landowners, not to farmers who rent land.
“We keep looking up,
hoping it will rain today,” he said on a recent afternoon as clouds covered the
sky. About 10 minutes later, his prayers seemed to have been answered when a
light drizzle started. But it petered out after a few minutes.
Neha Thirani contributed research from Mumbai.