Word: drought
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...says. "I have had to cut back on many things. I felt really bad when I couldn't even buy my grandchildren new clothes for a family wedding." Salim and Ahis Ahmed, two brothers who lease about half an acre from Singh, have also seen the drought shrink their usual income of Rs. 20,000 ($416) for every three-month growing season by half. "We were saving up for a motorcycle," says Ahis Ahmed. "It would have made our trips to the markets easier. Now it's not possible anymore...
...grocery store in Barola, another village in Uttar Pradesh, and their customers are mostly farmers. "People are not buying in bulk anymore. They come and buy things in limited quantities," Ombati says. That change has reduced their daily earnings from Rs. 2000 ($42) to Rs. 600 ($12.50). "In a drought, where is the money to buy things?" (See pictures of the deadly 2007 monsoon floods...
...Indian companies who make those products, and their shareholders, will soon ask themselves the same question. A recent report from analysts at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch in Mumbai projects "a 10 to 15% pullback in equities led by drought-led growth cuts." Every major drought in India has a pervasive impact on the economy, which is unlikely to meet the government's projected 7% GDP growth this year. (Analysts expect 6% or less.) With crops failing, food prices will go up everywhere, pushing up inflation. Mohammed Nadim, a vendor in Hoshiarpur, says the wholesale price of his cartful of sweet...
...Drought is no stranger to India - the monsoons, which are especially crucial for areas without irrigation, also failed in 2002 and 1987 - and the government is responding in the usual way, by expanding rural subsidies. In his Independence Day speech to the nation on Aug. 15, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised to postpone the date for repayment of farmers' bank loans and to give breaks on interest payments for short term crop loans. This comes on top of last year's $14 billion farm loan waiver program, price supports for agricultural products and an ambitious jobs scheme, which guarantees...
...Even if it can't buy rain, there is still time for the government of India to rethink how it can start to prepare for the next drought. Sunita Narain of the Centre for the Study of the Environment in New Delhi advocates a new, national water policy to make farmers less vulnerable to the vagaries of the monsoon, encompassing more effective use of groundwater, better monitoring of weather patterns and water supply, implementing village water-security plans, and encouraging conservation and water recycling in the cities. In a recent editorial she wrote, "We must learn, fast, how to reinvigorate...