The people of Kerala are feeling relieved and farmers are seeing some reason to keep their hopes alive for the months ahead as the Southwestern monsoon this year brought near-normal rainfall to the State after the huge deficits in the past two years and a severe drought, perhaps the severest in more than a century, in the last summer.
As the southwestern monsoon reached its close — as per normal schedule — on Saturday, Kerala’s rainfall deficit in the season stood at 10 per cent, showing a huge improvement from the deficits of 34 per cent and 26 per cent in the corresponding periods in 2016 and 2015 respectively. The State received 1,807 mm of rainfall in the season while the expected normal was 2,006 mm.
The nature of this year’s Southwestern monsoon, which had its touchdown on the Kerala coast on May 30, two day ahead of the normal date of June 1, was also more or less acceptable to the State in general as no major catastrophes visited it even during the periods of its intense activity though some discomforting incidents did take place.
Keralites are now hoping to get copious rains in Northeastern monsoon which should start — as per schedule — on Sunday and end with the close of December. The last Northeastern monsoon had brought terrible distress to the State with a shortfall in rainfall of over 61 per cent the impact of which was seen in full might due to the 34 per cent deficit in the preceding SW monsoon.
However, it is said that the Southwestern monsoon may linger over Kerala even after the scheduled date of its close, September 30, because its atmospheric slant is yet to fall below the required angle. According to weathermen, this is no strange phenomenon as the SW monsoon had lingered even beyond October 10 in several years.
While Pathanamthitta recorded a 1 per cent surplus rainfall in the season, all other districts except mountainous Wayanad received almost normal showers. The deficit was less than 10 per cent in six districts — Malappuram with 6 per cent shortfall, Kozhikode 5 per cent, Ernakulam 4 per cent, Palakkad 3 per cent and Kottayam and Kollam with 1 per cent deficit each.
Idukki, the other mountainous district where at least 30 major dams are situated, recorded a deficit of 11 per cent in rainfall in this year’s SW monsoon while no district in the State had received normal rainfall in the season in 2016.
Even Ernakulam, the district that received the highest rainfall, had recorded 24 per cent shortfall in rain last year.
Paddy, coffee and pepper farmers of Wayanad are already a worried lot as the district suffered a huge rainfall deficit in the third consecutive Southwest monsoon. Despite being a mountainous district with a vast forest cover, Wayanad had a rainfall deficit of 37 per cent in this monsoon whereas the shortfall was by 59 per cent in 2016 and 39 per cent in 2015.
“This seems to be an indicator of the crisis the greenest region in God’s Own Country is facing,” said Jaya Prakash, a farmer belonging to Sulthan Bathery in Wayanad. “Such a problem in one year can be seen as an aberration of weather. A second consecutive drought may seem bearable. But when it happens for a third time, it should be seen as a climatic crisis,” he said.
Despite the near — normal rainfall the State received this year — environmentalists, hydrologists and officials with the Government’s Water Resources Department seem to be unable to shed their anxieties about the possibility of a severe drought in the summer months next year because of the changes in the sub-soil storage conditions.
“The main reason for this anxiety is the alarming drop in the water table,” said hydrologist Ajith Kumar. “Kerala had seen what kind of a disaster this condition could bring about in the last summer. Water levels have gone down by alarming levels in both the open wells and bore wells. How far the rains can repair this damage is to be seen,” he said.
According to environmentalist Mohandas, the main reason for the consecutive severe droughts is the shrinkage of land under cultivation, wetlands and forest cover. “Paddy field can store immense quantities of water underneath. This capacity is bigger in the case of wetlands. When we erase such lands in the name of development, crises are bound to hit us,” he said.
Mohandas points out that the area of land under cultivation in Kerala had shrunk by 77 per cent between 1976 and now and this shrinkage was by 34 per cent in this millennium. Kerala’s wetlands had shrunk by 49 per cent since the start of the millennium, he says, adding that the State had lost nearly 65 per cent of its forest cover in the past hundred years.