In a major departure, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) will now stop use of the term 'drought' to describe poor rainfall recorded across parts of the country and replace it with the terms 'deficient year' and 'large deficient year'. IMD had formed a committee to look into issues relating to its glossary and it suggested a host of changes that included stopping use of the term drought and making changes to terms used to describe rainfall categories based on its intensity. Top IMD officials confirmed these changes to dna.
Currently, as per the IMD glossary, an all India drought year is defined as, "when the rainfall deficiency is more than 10% and when 20 to 40% of the country is under drought conditions, then the year is termed as all India drought year.
Speaking to dna, director-general of IMD Laxman Singh Rathore said that with time, the terminologies of weather forecasting have to change and the Met department's committee looked into those issues and IMD issued a circular regarding on the changes. "Declaring droughts is in the domain of state governments and there are technicalities involved in it. Our work is to monitor rainfall and its deficiency. The meteorological field is vast and we have our own way of defining droughts purely on the basis of rainfall deficiency," said Rathore.
He added, "But there are times when deficient rainfall does not necessarily mean bad crops as same amount of rainfall distributed differently across regions can have two separate effects. Also, since it is a state subject, they should be the one deciding it."
A drought is declared by state governments and based on investigation by teams of union agriculture ministry, funds are allocated for relied measures.
At the end of each summer, the IMD announces their long range forecast or outlook for the south west monsoon that feeds majority of India's farming. Although they do not explicitly use the term drought-year while announcing their outlook, a bleak forecast like the one seen in 2015 is often dubbed as 'drought year'.
