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In India, an impending summer followed by the most productive wet season popularly called monsoons witnesses a flurry of activities among weather experts who collate and analyze evidential data and compare these with past trends and occurrences for monitoring and more accurate forecasting of approaching weather patterns.

This arduous study which is undergoing a rapid incorporation of modern technologies, models and global synergy has emerged crucial in determining monsoons as they are directly linked with harvests, prices of overall commodities, stock markets and monetary policy and because agriculture along with allied sectors (forestry and fishing) account for about 16.6 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product and employ more than half of total workforce (going by 2009 official data).

Monsoons, which are massive South West atmospheric convective currents lash the Indian coasts by end of May or beginning of June and break into two parts.

While the Bay of Bengal branch moves over Kerala, Coromandel Coast, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, the North East states and then swerves North West along Indo-Gangetic plains, the Arabian Sea branch moves towards the Thar desert.

These inflowing moisture laden winds unleash an average annual rainfall of 4.6 inches on 64 percent of cultivable land at a time when the sowing of kharif crops like paddy, maize, millets, pulses, sorghum, cotton, etc is picking on, besides replenishing groundwater table, rivers and lakes.

In last four consecutive years the country experienced no droughts and hence reported a record food production.

Last year the rainfall was 6 percent above average and this year the government expects a harvest of 263 million tons of food grains.

However grim predictions of a weather glitch posing challenges to the economy and a newly formed central government post polls in May have been made by prestigious weather study institutions based out of China and Japan, Climate Prediction Center of the U.S., Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and also an Indian based private agency, Skymet.

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The last time when the country faced severe droughts were in 2002, 2004 and 2009 (driest year in forty years) when the dreadful consequences of the El Nino in the Pacific Ocean were seen in form of very poor rainfall levels, dismal harvests, skyrocketing food prices and worst inflations ever recorded in India.

Global meteorologists recommend that the country needs to be immensely prepared to tide through a dry, extremely warm and rainfall deficient 2015.

The El Nino which takes place once every three to five years and may last up to 18 months according to weatherpersons.

However a talk with officials at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reveals that the Indian scientists and meteorologists are in no mood to rely on western projections.

D.S. Pai, head of Long Term Forecasting Division gave just about half a chance for El Nino to play spoil sport with India’s chances of having a bountiful harvest.

“There are possibilities of a weak El Nino. Currently, conditions are neutral. However, predictions done before May have lower skill (accuracy). We will have clearer picture then. So, we don’t want to frighten people at this stage,” he categorically stated.

IMD’s director general, Laxman Singh Rathore, also urges for a waiting period till end of April when IMD would publicly furnish its own set of predictions.

He points out that the El Nino has not always been followed by droughts in India and argues, “In the past one month there have been a number of forecasts and certain agencies have retracted from their forecasts too. But more and more foreign forecasts are pointing to a gloomy monsoon as it is in their interests to bring down the country’s agricultural commodities and stock market.”

There is no denying that monsoon is a sensitive topic to the country and private commercial entities have a vested interest in speculative reports that suggest a gloomy rainy season.

On further prodding a few Indian weather forecasters privately concede that the 2014 monsoon is likely to be “insufficient” if not a calamitous one and this is when rainfall deficiency is more than 10 percent of long period average and adversely affects more than 20 percent of agricultural land (as per IMD’s definition of a drought year).

It is a known fact that IMD’s weather reports have never been free from faults.

The weather establishment still uses a statistical model for main forecast and for operational forecast of monsoons it uses the dynamical model borrowed from the U.S. on experimental basis that has been successful in predicting normal monsoons but not extreme events in monsoons.

Though efforts are on to indigenize the U.S. model, not before 2017 will this be achieved and this makes it all the more necessary that the government pays heed to El Nino warnings to draw up foolproof contingency plans like strengthening of public distributions systems, advising farmers to plant crops like wheat instead of paddy which consumes more water, and prevention of rotting of food grains and issuing stringent action against hoarders.

The current government and its Food Minister, Sharad Pawar, has reassured that the government is not taking any chances and last month issued a statement enlisting contingency plans being implemented but how far this is to be believed is doubtful given their recent record of checking prices of basic vegetables, cereals, etc.

Compounding Indian worries is the new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that forewarns the global community of dramatic, dangerous, epochal cusp on account of global warming and Indo-Gangetic plain as among the Earth’s focal points of climate change.

It elaborates that, “About 200 million people (using the current population) in this area whose food intake relies on crop harvests would experience adverse impacts. India’s food demand is likely to double by 2050 but harvests of rice and wheat, main cereal crops, to drastically fall.”

The report concludes that the government cannot be slow and compromising in its efforts as the country, which is already vulnerable, cannot withstand a doomsday scenario of stress on food availability and economic growth, accompanied by greater disease incidence and threat to its national security.

Chandra Bhushan of Center of Science and Enviornment says, “Currently, the outlook is bleak.” On the question of whether India is prepared to face the climate-change challenge and develop resilience, the answer is “no.”