Monsoon Forecast: Give the Met Dept a Break. They are still on target and so are we!

Media has apparently gone totally berserk declaring the monsoon dead even as it just arrived. Their headlines scream that June rainfall was deficient by a whopping 29% and that 83 per cent of the country, including India’s granary states of Punjab and Haryana, receiving deficient or scanty rainfall so far.

Self-titled “Food Security Analyst”, Devinder Sharma of the NGO sector and founder member of Indian Against Corruption, also joined the scare mongering tamasha when he warned during an interview to a news channel, of the prospect of a negative agricultural growth rate due to a likely El Niño effect! This, Sharma added, will further accentuate the downward pressure that the overall economy is currently experiencing, that has seen our economic growth rate slip below the 7% levels - the first time over almost a decade!

It was left for Deputy Chairman of India’s Planning Commission, Montek Singh Aluwalia to strike a word caution to journalists:

"It’s not the date of the onset of the monsoon; it's the overall level and distribution over the next four months. You can have a situation where the monsoon is absolutely on time and then it peters out. You can have a situation where the monsoon is one week late or even 10 days late built then is healthy."

Read more: http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.in/2012/07/monsoon-forecast-give-met-dept-break.html