Dependence on Erratic Monsoon

Indian agriculture is fundamentally a gamble on the monsoon. The textbook opens this section by stating a stark fact: irrigation covers only about 33 per cent of the country's cultivated area. This means the remaining two-thirds of farmland has no assured water supply and depends entirely on rainfall.

The problem is not just a lack of rain, but the nature of the rain itself. The monsoon is erratic — its performance varies wildly in timing, amount, and distribution. When the south-west monsoon performs poorly, it creates a double blow: not only do rain-fed crops fail, but the supply of canal water for irrigation also gets adversely affected, since reservoirs and rivers depend on the same rainfall.

This dependence creates a paradox. In Rajasthan and other drought-prone areas, the rainfall is too meagre and highly unreliable. But even regions that receive high annual rainfall are not safe — they experience considerable fluctuations from year to year. This makes the entire system vulnerable to both droughts and floods, often in the same region.