Maharashtra Must Wait Till October 5 for Drought Assessment as Fadnavis Warns of ‘Worse Than 1972’

The news

Mumbai. Maharashtra cannot yet declare the drought its Chief Minister now compares to 1972, because the rules that release Central money set the calendar. Under National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) rules, The Indian Express explains, drought assessment for kharif (the monsoon cropping season, June to October) can begin only from October 5, once the monsoon starts to withdraw; for rabi (the winter season, October to April) it can be held in March 2027. India has no single accepted definition of drought: States may declare one on local conditions, but their report must conform to NDRF norms for the Centre to release funds. As the paper lists them, the criteria cover crop loss, the moisture adequacy index (how well soil moisture meets crop needs), rainfall deficit, falling food production and labour migration, with conditions on sowing, drinking water, groundwater and fodder. Maharashtra will seek Central assistance after October 5; meanwhile it has begun surveys and panchanamas (on-the-spot loss records drawn up by revenue officials), and a Central team will make its own assessment before funds are released. On Wednesday, September 23, touring Latur, Dharashiv and Solapur, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the State is heading for a severe drought “likely to be worse than that of 1972”, which is remembered for massive crop loss and an acute foodgrain shortage. He promised a Government Resolution (a State executive order) before Saturday, relief credited directly to farmers’ bank accounts from the State treasury without waiting for Central funds, and continuation of the ₹40,385-crore loan waiver announced in July. Latur and Dharashiv received only half their normal rainfall; he blamed a “Super El Niño”. Per the IMD, 31 of 36 districts are rain-deficient, 20 of them by 25% to 58% (the news report says 25 to 60 per cent). Sowing began on July 15 instead of June 10, and the kharif crop on 147 lakh hectares has withered, soybean and cotton worst. As of September 20, the 138 major dams held 85% and 2,630 small dams 43%, against 96% and 57% a year ago; Marathwada has 46% against 81%. Nationally, The Hindu reports, the rainfall deficit was about 15% below normal up to September 22. This magazine covered Maharashtra’s preparations on September 22; the 1972 comparison, the GR and the procedure are new. The link is GS3 disaster management and GS2 fiscal federalism.

Static syllabus linkage

1. India declares drought by a manual, not by a single number. Drought is conventionally classed as meteorological (a shortfall of rain), agricultural (a shortfall of soil moisture for crops) and hydrological (a shortfall of surface and ground water). The Manual for Drought Management of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, issued in 2016 and updated in 2020, sets a two-step test. First come mandatory indicators: rainfall deviation, the Standardised Precipitation Index or dry spells. Then the State picks three impact indicators from four groups: crop sown area (below 85% of normal is moderate, below 75% severe), satellite vegetation indices such as NDVI, soil moisture (the Moisture Adequacy Index, actual evapotranspiration divided by potential evapotranspiration, as a percentage) and hydrology (reservoir, groundwater or streamflow). Drought is ‘severe’ if at least two of the three are severe and one moderate, and ‘moderate’ if at least two are moderate. Field verification in 10% of villages follows; crop loss of 33% or more qualifies, above 50% for severe. The State declares by notification, normally by 31 October for kharif and 31 March for rabi, valid for up to six months.
2. The State fund pays first and the national fund tops up severe calamities. The Disaster Management Act, 2005 provides for a National Disaster Response Fund under Section 46 and a State Disaster Response Fund under Section 48. Drought is a notified disaster for these funds, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, not the Home Ministry, is the nodal ministry for it. Under the 2020 Manual, moderate drought is handled from the SDRF, while severe drought makes a State eligible for NDRF help: the State submits a memorandum within a week of declaring drought, an Inter-Ministerial Central Team is to visit within a week of receiving it, and the Centre is to decide within a month of the team’s report. Final approval rests with a High Level Committee chaired by the Union Home Minister. The Finance Commission of the period fixes each State’s SDRF, to which the Centre contributes the larger share.
3. The Supreme Court turned the drought manual from advice into a benchmark. In Swaraj Abhiyan v. Union of India (2016), a public interest petition over drought in several States, the Supreme Court criticised the reluctance and delay of some States in declaring drought and the outdated tools used to assess it. It directed the Union to revise the Drought Management Manual with modern indicators and timelines, and to constitute the National Disaster Response Fund and National Disaster Mitigation Fund that the Disaster Management Act provides for. The 2016 Manual followed later that year. The ruling made declaration a matter of evidence and time-bound procedure, because rights to food and work depend on it.
4. The 1972 drought gave India the idea of a legal right to work. Mass relief works during the 1972 drought grew into Maharashtra’s Employment Guarantee Scheme, conceived by V.S. Page, which promised work on demand to rural adults and was given statutory form by the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Act, 1977. It was financed partly by a tax on professions, trades and employments paid by urban earners, which States may levy under Article 276, so that the city helped pay for the village in bad years. The scheme became the model for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, which guaranteed 100 days of wage work a year to every rural household whose adults volunteered for unskilled manual work. The Drought Prone Areas Programme of 1973-74, which shifted attention from relief to building water and soil assets in chronically dry blocks, came out of the same period.

Why UPSC loves this

1. Drought sits where GS3 disaster management meets agriculture. UPSC has asked candidates to discuss drought as a disaster “in view of its spatial expanse, temporal duration, slow onset and lasting effects on vulnerable sections”, with a focus on the National Disaster Management Authority’s September 2010 drought guidelines and preparedness for El Niño and La Niña. Such a question tests the declaration procedure, the funding chain from SDRF to NDRF, and the climate driver; Maharashtra this year supplies all three with current numbers.
2. Prelims tests the vocabulary of drought and the monsoon. Prelims has repeatedly asked about El Niño, the Indian Ocean Dipole and the monsoon, and about the funds and authorities under the Disaster Management Act. IMD’s rainfall categories, the Moisture Adequacy Index, the NDRF and SDRF sections and the agriculture ministry’s nodal role for drought are all fair game, as is the lineage from Maharashtra’s Employment Guarantee Scheme to the 2005 national law.
3. GS2 reads drought as a question of fiscal federalism. Relief money moves through a Centre–State chain, and disputes over it have reached the courts: Karnataka went to the Supreme Court in 2024 over delay in Central drought assistance. A GS2 answer on cooperative federalism or the Finance Commission can use the SDRF–NDRF design and the gap between a State’s declaration and the Centre’s release as evidence of friction in federal finance.

Analysis

1. The October 5 rule is sound science and poor timing for the farmer. Drought is a slow-onset disaster: a late spell of rain can rescue a crop that looked lost in August, so the rules wait for the season to end before counting losses. That protects the public purse from early or inflated claims. But the farmer’s needs do not wait: rabi seed, fertiliser and fodder must be bought now, and loans fall due. Mr. Fadnavis’s promise to pay from the State treasury without waiting for Central funds is the right bridge, because it separates relief, which is urgent, from reimbursement, which can follow procedure. The risk is that the Central team may assess less damage than the State has already paid for, leaving the State budget to absorb the difference.
2. ‘Worse than 1972’ is true of the crop and not yet true of the water. The comparison holds where 1972 hurt most, in rain-fed farming. Latur and Dharashiv have half their normal rain, the kharif crop on 147 lakh hectares has withered, and the State’s irrigation potential is under 20%. But the 138 major dams still hold 85%, and the CM says drinking water is reserved until December, a buffer the Maharashtra of 1972 did not have. The distress is concentrated where the poorest farmers depend on small tanks and rain: small and micro dams are at 43% and Marathwada at 46% against 81% last year. Large reservoirs have turned this into a crisis of rural livelihoods and small-scale water rather than of State-wide thirst, and relief should be targeted on that basis.
3. Declaring drought is a fiscal decision, which is why the rules try to remove discretion. A declaration commits a State to input subsidies and other relief, paid first from its own SDRF. States therefore have reasons both to delay, to save money, and to inflate, to draw Central funds; the Supreme Court in Swaraj Abhiyan noted the reluctance of some States to declare drought at all. The Manual’s satellite indices, soil-moisture measures and village verification exist to make the decision rest on evidence rather than politics. Yet indices can miss what farmers see: The Indian Express reports that where rain did fall this year it came in short, intense bursts that damaged soil and caused erosion, so a rainfall total can look better than the crop it produced. The answer is better data, with satellite readings matched to panchanamas and published district by district, not more discretion.
4. A loan waiver is a blunt drought instrument. The ₹40,385-crore waiver announced in July, before the drought’s full extent was known, helps farmers with outstanding formal loans. It does nothing for tenants, sharecroppers and farm workers, who have no crop loan in their names and are hit hardest when there is no work in the fields. Input subsidy per hectare of damaged crop, insurance claims and wage work reach these groups better. The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana provides for an on-account payment of up to 25% of likely claims when a mid-season adversity such as a long dry spell is expected to cut yield below half of normal, the quickest insured route to cash. The counter-view is that a waiver clears farmers’ credit records so they can borrow for rabi, which matters when two seasons are at risk.
5. The lesson of 1972 was assets, not only transfers. The 1972 response is remembered because relief work built percolation tanks, roads and bunds that outlasted the drought and then became a legal right to work. Today’s announcements are almost all transfers: direct bank credits, a loan waiver, water and fodder. Transfers are faster and less leaky than old relief works, and direct benefit transfer is a real advance. But Marathwada’s 46% storage and a farm economy with under 20% irrigation are structural problems, and a drought year is the cheapest time to mobilise labour for watershed and small-storage work. A response that ends in cash alone prepares the ground for the next comparison with 1972.

Administrator's brainstorm