Countering El Nino and its ripple-down effects

Abstract

The recent monetary policy announcement of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mentions in detail about the fear of El Nino looming large on the Indian economy. The recent monetary policy announcement of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mentions in detail about the fear of El Nino looming large on the Indian economy. In North India, agricultural activity was already adversely affected by unseasonal rains and hailstorms in March 2015, impacting nearly 94 lakh hectares of area under the Rabi crop. The outlook for Kharif season is also not very encouraging. The Indian Meteorological Department has predicted that the south-west monsoon will be 7 per cent below the long period average.

Conceptually, El Nino is a climatic development occurring in Asia and Pacific every three to seven years and lasting about two years due to the warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. In the past, El Nino has been linked to poor monsoon rains in India and in most of the cases this has resulted in droughts. In India, examination of empirical evidence since 1950, reveals that there is a strong relationship between El Nino and droughts, as of the 13 droughts since then, 10 were in El Nino years. And since 1980, all the six droughts were in El Nino years. Read more at: https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/comment/countering-el-nino-and-its-ripple-down-effects-95470