Changing the frame: On India, forecasting and natural events.
India must use forecast to better prepare for calamities.
India received 8% more monsoon rain this year than normal. From a bird’s eye view, this is bountiful. Official numbers suggest that the total area sown under kharif crops, until mid-September, increased by around 15 lakh hectares to about 1,110 lakh hectares. Rice cultivation has seen significant growth of over 8.45 lakh hectares to over 438 lakh hectares, compared to 430 lakh hectares during the same period last year. Pulses, coarse cereals and oilseeds have shown similar trends. In India’s main reservoirs, the total available water capacity is, as of late September, 163 BCM (billion cubic metres) up from the 157.8 BCM last year. 1 BCM is trillion litres. However, torrential rains, particularly in August and September, saw several districts in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab inundated — even cut off — after swollen rivers breached their flood marks. In Punjab, entire villages have been inundated, sinking farmland. While not a story unique to this year, there have been several landslides and flooding (urban and rural). Land erosion and siltation were widespread across the country leading to colossal damage.
Seasonal rainfall over northwest India, central India and the south peninsula were 27%, 15% and 10% more than their seasonal averages. In several instances, there were reports of ‘cloudburst’ — in meteorological terms, a very specific definition when State officials reported a deluge. Only in a single instance, in Tamil Nadu, did this actually bear out. While technical definitions might appear as a quibble, they influence the public perception of such events. A ‘cloudburst’ suggests something that is exceedingly rare and unforeseen, whose brunt must only be borne. On the other hand, even terms such as ‘normal’ rainfall — even though their visible impact can be, frequently, as damaging — also tend to convey fait accompli. A resignation to fate. Since April, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has consistently pointed to seasonal rainfall being “above normal” or at least 4% more than the long period average of 87 cm as per its forecast. Whenever its figures bear out, it is framed as a victory of forecasting and less a failure of adequately preparing for calamity. While the establishment has forever been psychologically primed to treat a warning of drought as worth bracing for on a ‘war footing’, excess rains are seen as natural munificence. With developments in forecasting technology and the know-how to improve infrastructure, it is high time that this framing is modified. Failure to do so ought to be seen as an abdication of the government’s responsibility to the public.