About 42% of India's land area is facing drought, with 6% exceptionally dry--four times the spatial extent of drought last year, according to data collected as of 26 March from the Drought Early Warning System (DEWS), a real-time drought monitoring platform.

Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, parts of the North-East, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are the worst hit. These states are home to 500m people, almost 40% of the country’s population, reported Business Standard.

Extent of drought

The parts of the country facing drought have been divided into six categories—Exceptionally Dry, Extremely Dry, Severely Dry, Moderately Dry, Abnormally Dry and No Drought, as per DEWS.

About 6% of the land area of the country is currently in the Exceptionally Dry category, which is nearly four times the 1.6% area at the same time last year. The area in Extremely and Exceptionally dry categories is 11% of the entire country, more than double the 5% area in March 2018, as per DEWS data.

Monsoon rains

While the central government has not declared drought anywhere so far, the state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan have declared many of their districts as drought-hit.

Failed monsoon rains are the primary reason for the current situation. The North-East monsoon, also known as “post-monsoon rainfall” (October-December) that provides 10-20% of India’s rainfall, brought rainfall which was 44% lower than in 2018 from the long-term normal of 127.2mm, as per data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD). This compounded the rainfall deficit in the South-West (SW) monsoon (June-September) that provides 80% of India’s rainfall, which fell short by 9.4% in 2018--close to the 10% deficit range when the IMD declares a drought.

Dr Vimal Mishra, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, and the developer of DEWS, said that India experienced widespread drought every year since 2015, with the exception of 2017.

As El Nino—the unusual warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that makes Indian summers warmer and reduces rainfall—looms over the 2019 SW monsoon, pre-monsoon showers (March-May) this year are also deficient.