For Nitin Khadse, a five-acre farmer and social activist in the cotton district of Yavatmal, the first month of this monsoon is already a puzzle.

“For the last few years, we’ve noticed that rainfall is not uniform in a circle of 10-12 villages, but this year, I see that pattern on one farm—while one patch of my farm got rain, the other patch did not,” Khadse, 45, told National Herald over the phone from his Jalka village. “Many farmers have completed their sowing even when the rains are inadequate,” he said. “My worry is that we may have to go for a resowing because our first sowing will probably fail.”

Every year, June marks the beginning of rural India’s most consequential gamble. Farmers till their fields, buy seeds, mostly on credit, buy fertilisers, and then wait for the first spells of dependable rain. In dryland areas across the country, agriculture has always been a wager on the monsoon, because that’s the only source of irrigation. This year, as June comes to an end, the wager itself is uncertain — delayed or suspended, in the language of farmers.

Vast swathes of the country are yet to get adequate rainfall. In several regions, the rains have not yet arrived. By end-June, India had received roughly 42 per cent below-normal rainfall since the onset of the southwest monsoon, making this one of the driest Junes in a century. That’s the countrywide average.

The deficit, as per IMD (Indian Meteorological Department) data, has been particularly severe in central India where rainfall has been nearly 60 per cent below normal in many regions. For farmers in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and adjoining states, this marks the difference between sowing on time and waiting anxiously for another week.

The monsoons have an overbearing effect on the Indian economy.

Also Read: Monsoon on pause, agriculture in peril

On the brighter side, the IMD forecasts better and well-distributed rains in most parts of the country in the first week of July. With growing inflation, dwindling incomes and other pressures, a bad rain year will have devastating consequences for........

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