A revival in India's monsoon rains is helping ease dry weather that's caused drought in a third of the nation's districts and dented sowing of rice and sugar cane, a weather bureau official said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that there was "no need to panic" as the nation has "adequate stock of wheat and rice" to face the drought.
Uttar Pradesh, the country's biggest cane grower, Madhya Pradesh, the largest soybeans producer, and Bihar, a top grower of rice and corn, received "good rain" over the past few days, said Ajit Tyagi, director general of the India Meteorological Department, from New Delhi today.
The monsoon season, which brings about three-quarters of the nation's annual rainfall, may be the driest in seven years, Tyagi said last week, curbing farm output in the world's second- biggest producer of rice, wheat and sugar. As many as 209 of 626 districts have declared drought, the farm ministry said.
"A lot of paddy crop has been saved in Punjab, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh because of irrigation," Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar told reporters in New Delhi earlier today before a meeting of chief ministers with Singh to discuss the drought. Recent rains may have helped the crops, he said.
Rice, the nation's biggest monsoon-sown crops, has been the worst hit: the crop area has fallen 19 percent from a year ago to 24.7 million hectares as of Aug. 12, the farm ministry said. Cane has been planted to 4.25 million hectares, compared with 4.38 million hectares a year earlier.
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