Indian farmers face harder life ahead: Studies

The unseasonal rain and erratic weather -- which are unsettling the Indian farmer and the nation's agriculture, economy and politics -- are no aberrations, according to global studies. Extreme rainfall in central India, the core of the monsoon system, are increasing and moderate rainfall is decreasing, as part of complex changes in local and world weather. The stories of Indian farmers not only indicate changes over the past three years, but longer-term patterns in India's agricultural lifeline, the monsoons. Even when the average seasonal monsoon figures appear to be normal, fluctuations in rainfall in a country with 56 percent of sown area rainfed, can cause extreme wet and dry local conditions with wide economic, employment and social implications: About 600 million Indians depend on agriculture in India. A wide range of reasons, including low productivity of land, market failures, debts, pests and uncertain weather, have led to a farming crisis in India, and farmers' suicides have become a serious humanitarian and political issue for more than a decade. As the monsoons bring 85 percent of India's precipitation -- all the water that falls to the ground as rain, snow and hail -- fluctuations and uncertainties in weather can have serious impact on farming. Over 60 years, monsoon rainfall has declined and the variability has increased. The average total rainfall during the peak monsoon season of July-August has declined since 1951, but the variability of rain during these months has increased -- deluges are more severe, and dry spells more frequent. That is the finding of a 2014 Stanford University paper, which compares Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) data over two periods: 1951 to 1980, and 1981 to 2011.