Hyderabad : As Telangana grapples with increasingly erratic rainfall, experts say the real challenge is no longer just identifying drought but detecting vulnerability before agricultural stress spirals into a crisis. They argue that India’s drought assessment framework, while comprehensive, remains largely geared towards confirming drought after conditions worsen rather than providing an early warning system for regions already at risk.
India’s first national Manual for Drought Management was issued in 2009 and revised in 2016. The current framework, introduced in 2020, broadened the range of indicators used to assess drought, incorporating rainfall, vegetation, soil moisture, cropped area, and hydrological parameters such as groundwater, reservoirs, and stream flow. As a result, regions with stressed groundwater, degraded soils or heavy dependence on a single crop can suffer far greater damage from the same rainfall deficit than more resilient areas.
Agricultural scientist GV Ramanjaneyulu said drought assessment should clearly differentiate between the hazard posed by a rainfall deficit and the vulnerability of the farming system exposed to it. But whether it becomes a farming disaster depends on what that rainfall shock encounters — depleted groundwater, degraded soils, unsuitable and water-intensive cropping systems, rising cultivation costs and household debt,” he said. The framework is designed to prevent drought from being declared solely on the basis of below-normal rainfall. States are required to assess multiple indicators and conduct field verification before formally declaring drought. However, experts contend that the system still focuses more on determining whether drought has already set in than on assessing how vulnerable a farming region is to an emerging rainfall shock. The distinction is becoming increasingly important in Telangana, where rainfall variability, dependence on groundwater, cropping choices and rising weather extremes can combine to trigger agricultural distress even before conventional drought indicators breach prescribed thresholds. “A weak monsoon is a hazard. Experts point out that the current system does not bring such underlying vulnerabilities into a single, continuous assessment.