MC Daily Monsoon Tracker: India’s deficit narrows, Delhi worsens

Rainfall situation improves a bit for India

India’s rainfall deficit narrowed to 17% for the first 20 days of June compared with 18% on the previous data, data released by the Indian Meteorological Department showed.

However, Delhi’s situation continued to remain grim as the national capital’s rain deficit widened to 95%.

A Moneycontrol analysis shows that Northern Indian states are facing largest rainfall deficits compared to normal. (see graphic)

In monsoon parlance, a normal is calculated using long-period average of 30 years for a specific region.

A deficit is computed in percentage terms if the rainfall was below the long-period average.

Except for the eight states and union territories which have received more rainfall than the normal, rest of the country was facing a deficit. Moreover, in 14 states precipitation was lower than 50% of normal during this period. Some of these include, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Jharkhand and Gujarat.

In Delhi and Chandigarh, the departure is more than -90%.

The reservoir level situation has worsened. For the country as a whole reservoir levels are down 9% from normal, compared with 8% last week.

Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh have an over 50% deficit in reservoir levels.

Economists contend that the situation can end up hurting farm income, agricultural output and consumer inflation. Food inflation was sticky above 8% in May and is likely to stay elevated in the coming months.

A higher food inflation means that rural inflation has outstripped urban inflation for nearly a year and is likely to do so in coming months.

A high rural inflation further eats into wages, which affects rural economy.

The agricultural sector recorded 1.4% growth in FY24, compared to 4.7% in the previous year, lower than 3.7% long-term average.