Drought fear in T, AP, thanks to hooky Monsoon

With the southwest Monsoon entering the second half and no sign of rains, a severe drought is staring in the eyes of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

With a very harsh summer and deadly heatwave followed by a very long dry spell in the first two months of Monsoon, the agriculture sector has been hit badly in both the States. lack of rain has also depleted the ground water causing a serious drinking water problem both in the rural and urban areas. The situation is also not comfortable on the power front for Telangana as hydel generation has come to a standstill long ago.

The impact on the agriculture sector has been so hard that against the normal sowing of 41.43 lakh hectares, so far sowing was taken up only on an area of 27.41 lakh hectares in the nine districts of Telangana. It amounts to sowing only on 66 per cent of the total area.In AP, the situation was still worse as against the normal area of 42.55 lakh hectares, sowing operations were taken up only on an area of 12.86 lakh hectares in the 13 districts of the State.

Jhansi lakshmi, a senior official in Natural Calamities Evaluation cell in directorate of agriculture, said that the dry spell was having a bad impact on the crops especially on the paddy. “Situation was not good because of the long dry spell. Only in the irrigated areas with water inflow, there is no problem,” she said.

This will be the second consecutive year when the rains are deficient in Telangana.

In Andhra Pradesh there were good rains in June, the first month of Monsoon. But the dry spell which set in later is still continuing and even couple of low pressure areas in the Bay of Bengal failed to break it.Officials of AP agriculture department were still hopeful that as most of the areas in the State were under irrigation project, situation can improve even if there were good rains in the catchment areas of river Krishna elsewhere.

Within Andhra Pradesh, the traditionally drought-prone region of Rayalaseema and adjoining south coastal Andhra were affected more by the Monsoon failure. The other districts in the central and northern coastal Andhra received somewhat excess rainfall. There was 36% deficit rainfall in Rayalaseema region.  

The lack of rains has also led to depletion of water levels in major dams affecting the supply of irrigation water from Nagarjuna Sagar and Srisaialm projects over the river Krishna. Telangana’s projects over both Krishna and Godavari were hit by the low inflows and there was no water supply for irrigation from Sriram Sagar over Godavari, Maner dam, and Jurala, Nagarjuna Sagar and Srisaialm on River Krishna.

It is significant that the waters of both the major rivers and several projects are shared by both the Telugu States.As far as the impact of the drought on the dry spell is concerned Telangana is unlikely to suffer as bad as Andhra Pradesh as the contribution of agriculture sector to the gross State domestic product in Telangana is only 17% against 27% in Andhra Pradesh. This is causing concern to the officials of Andhra Pradesh already worried over the yawning revenue deficit following the bifurcation of the State.

Weather officials say that the deficit rainfall in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was as per their earlier forecast on account of the impact of El Nino. M Narasimha Rao at the Indian Meteorological Center at Hyderabad said that Telangana received 16% less rainfall this year so far. “Parts of Telangana will receive only light to moderate rains and isolated thundershowers in the days to come,” he said belying the hopes of any dramatic turnaround in the situation. With the dismal prospects of rains in the coming weeks, drought situation was likely to worsen. Officials say moderate to heavy rains was their only hope.

On the whole 229 mandals (blocks) in six districts of Telangana and another six districts of Andhra Pradesh are likely to be declared drought hit.

Consequent increase in the demand for power both in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana is likely to worsen the power shortages. Telangana will be more vulnerable as most of the power generating stations are located in AP which can stop the supply of power to the other State.