Drought Management in India

Drought differs from other hazards as it has a slow onset, evolves over months to years, affects a large spatial extent, and cause little structural damage. Its onset and end and severity are often difficult to determine. Droughts impact span economic, environmental and social sectors.

In India, droughts occur in areas of high rainfall as well as areas with meagre rainfall. Water scarcity conditions in the Himalayan region are also not uncommon. Drought is not just related to scarcity or the absence of rainfall, but also related to inefficient water resource management. Requirement of over 80-90 % of the drinking water and over 50 % for irrigation is met from groundwater. Without any large scale rainwater harvesting measures in India, the recharge levels are very limited. Analysis of incidence of droughts over the last two centuries in India does not show any increase in the incidence of droughts in recent years. However, their severity appears to have increased. In 2002, India experienced its worst drought in 20 years. However the probability of drought in India varies from once in 2 years in Western Rajasthan to once in 15 years in Assam.

Classification of drought

The National Commission on Agriculture in India classified three types of drought viz. meteorological, agricultural and hydrological. Meteorological drought occurs when there is significant decrease from normal precipitation over an area (i.e. more than 10 %). Hydrological drought is due to prolonged meteorological drought resulting in depletion of surface and sub-surface water resources. In case of agricultural drought, the soil moisture and rainfall are inadequate to support healthy crop growth. Drought is also classified on the basis of time of onset as early season, mid-season and late season.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) recognizes

• A drought week; when rainfall in a week is less than half of its normal amount,
• An agricultural drought; when four drought weeks occur consecutively during mid-June to September
• A seasonal drought; when seasonal rainfall is deficient by more than the standard deviations from the normal
• A drought year; when annual rainfall is deficient by 20 % of normal or more and
• Severe drought year; when annual rainfall is deficient by 25-40% of normal or more.

Drought Risk

Drought vulnerability depends on a region’s risk of water shortage and the exposure of the communities to the problems arising thereafter. It is critical for countries to better understand drought and how it varies temporally and spatially to establish comprehensive and integrated drought early warning systems by incorporating climate, soil, and water supply functions such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture, snow pack, reservoir and lake levels, ground water levels, and stream flow.

National Disaster Management Guidelines on Management of Drought

The NDMA guidelines on management of drought are issued in 2010. The recommendations are as follows:

1. Creation of Drought Monitoring Cells (DMCs) cells at state level with requisite staff.
2. Preparation of vulnerability maps for each state by the State DMCs.
3. Development of real-time drought related information by using information and communication technology.
4. The watershed development approach would be taken up for drought management.
5. Integration of ground-based information with the space-based information for comprehensive reporting.
6. Assessment of damage would include agricultural production, depletion of water resources, livestock population, land degradation and deforestation as well as human health.
7. Revamping of Drought Management Information System of Department of Agriculture.
8. To enable micro level analysis and forecasting, automatic weather station and rain-gauges to be put in place.
9. Development of drought resistant crop varieties through large scale research.
10. The mitigation measures to be taken would include cloud-seeding and conduct of pilot studies in all categories of drought prone areas for suggesting long term mitigation measures.
11. Formulation of a cloud seeding policy.
12. Promoting crop diversification through sprinklers/Drip irrigation systems (micro irrigation techniques).
13. Prompt provision of credit in the drought affected areas; and extension of marketing and price support.
14. Afforestation with subabul, seemaruba, casurina, eucalyptus and bio diesel plantation like Jatropha and pongomia.
15. Development of insurance products for different agro-climatic zones providing coverage against drought. Crop insurance to be extended to post-harvest losses. Promotion of price linked insurance products to avoid distress sales of farm produce. Use of satellite derived crop condition images as surrogates to crop yield estimates for settling insurance claims.
16. Framing a realistic national training and capacity building programme for drought management. Officers at PRIs and ULBs to be provided with required training.
17. Encouraging NGOs, PRIs and ULBs for generating awareness among farmers.
18. Updating the syllabi of graduate and under-graduate courses in agriculture to include drought management.
19. Fodder, Cattle feed and mineral mixture to be supplied to all productive animals to prevent distress sales of cattle.
20. Wherever necessary and feasible, the corporate sector should also be involved in supporting drought risk management efforts as part of CSR.