Agricultural Drought and Food Security in India: Role of Indian Summer Monsoon

Abstract:

In a country like India, where agriculture is tuned with monsoonal rainfall, natural disasters like drought, flood etc. has significant impact on agriculture of a country. In general, drought i.e. scarcity of monsoonal rainfall is very common in India. Whenever monsoon is weak, India suffers strong drought like conditions. Using satellite borne Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) measurement, Vegetation Health Index (VHI), GPCP rainfall and Standardized Potential Evapo-transpiration Index (SPEI) data we have tried to characterize the agricultural droughts over India, which affects the cropping yield and increases the land requirement for food. This has strong impact on the economy of the country. Climatologically vegetation condition of extreme north western and eastern part is poor, whereas the south central part is fewer droughts prone. Agricultural droughts mainly affected the vegetation of extreme north western part, eastern and south-eastern part. Therefore, apparently India needs to rely heavily on advanced irrigation practices to overcome the food demand. We have seen that prior to 2002 severe drought India don't have any long term disaster management policy to confront the agricultural drought. Several mitigation policies and practices after 2002 eventually restrict the agricultural losses due to agricultural drought. Additionally, we relate the drought events in India with El Nino/La Nina. Although, El Nino and La Nina has different impact on the agricultural drought occurrences over central India and the Indo Gangetic plains, respectively, but it seems that El Nino affects the Indian summer monsoon rainfall and modulates the severity of the events, which eventually increases the agricultural land demand of India.