Monsoon
– The great gamble
As
May approaches its end, heat becomes unbearable in Indian subcontinent. People starts
to preying rain god in anticipation. Everyone including farmer in central India
or it may be broker on dalal street seems to talking about one magic word monsoon , monsoon rain. In summer sun scorches
the Indian subcontinent
at the same time It’s winter in southern ocean ,result in formation of low
pressure area over subcontinent .This
sets up the stage for one the greatest drama on our planet. This
low pressure area on subcontinent pushes wind from sea to land. These winds, rich in moisture, are drawn towards north,
creating winds blowing storm clouds. Clouds smashed against The walls of mountains,
block the winds forcing them emptied to emptied their barrels.
Monsoon is a magical time in India, the cooling rains bring delight and fertility
to the land. It is celebrated throughout Indian culture. Indra, principle deity
of Aryans is the god of rain. There are many hymns in Rig-Veda describing how
Indra smashes clouds with his vajra and bring rain. Kalidasa one of the
greatest poet in Indian history describes journey of clouds sea to Himalaya all
along the subcontinent. He literally put the whole drama in front of your eyes.
Today we don’t have Kalidasa , but we have satellites up in the sky to
keep watch on the moments of clouds . Each year just after second week of may
media get flooded with the details of the weather of the day with a satellite picture
of the Indian subcontinent showing the movements of the Clouds in the sky.
Monsoon is greatest
gamble for nation. India second fastest growing economy in the world, so called
superpower in IT , still when may end comes near everyone started discussing
rains… Monsoon is most important factor in all aspects of life in India .Monsoon
winds are strong enough to swing Mumbai stock exchange, can easily change
political equations. Last few years we had good monsoon , but if we look at the
history monsoon is has shown erratic behavior. With anthropogenic climate
change it will be foolish to belive on monsoon. India is still predominantly
agricultural country. More than sixty crore people are depend on their
livelihood for agricultural. Last two years global food prizes are following
upward trends. Within twenty five years India will become most popular country
in the world. In these condition two or three failed monsoon means devastation.
Still over policymakers are behaving as a Nero. India spends huge amount of
money on irrigation projects, building big dams , at the cost of hundreds and
thousands of acres of forest . Dams altered natural flow regime of the river,
and turned it into stagnate, dead poodle.
To minimize
adverse effect of climate change we need new varieties of crops which could
withstand the adverse condition. Last time we were saved by Norman Borlaug’s dwarf wheat , but this time we may not be lucky. We
need to find out indigenous solutions for our problems .We need to invest on
agricultural research , but government is not paying any attention . Take this
example . Each IIT in a country received around two hundred crore a year to
produce engineer to serve some foreign company, when we compare IIT’s with
Institutes like MIT, they stands nowhere. ICAR ( Indian council for
agricultural research) is one of the prime research institute in India receive
only around fifty crores a year .We need to pump lots of money in agricultural research
to attract best brains. India is a country with thousands of years of continuous
history , here conditions are very different from rest of the world. We don’t
need Harvard or Cambridge educated policymakers, but we need someone whose
umbilical cord is still connected to soil of India.
Hadappa
civilization was largest human settlement of It’s time, spread along the river
Sarasvati. According to earlier estimation, river was vanished because of movements
of tectonic plates. New research suggest that, Sarasvati was monsoon fed river
and it was disappear due to failed monsoon over a long stretch of time, along
with the Sarasvati this great civilization also disappeared. Even after five
thousand years conditions are very similar
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