Ramesh Reddy, 44, put everything he had into his 3.5 acres of tomato farm in June. The farmer from Kolar district in southern Karnataka state invested 320,000 rupees (€3,000, $3,357), borrowing 250,000 rupees at 24% annual interest and pledging his wife's wedding jewelry as collateral. The harvest was meant to repay the loan and cover his son's overdue college fees.
Then his irrigation well ran dry. Within three weeks, the plants had turned brown and he could not salvage a single crate. "I have lost everything I invested," Reddy told DW.
"I have no money left for the next crop and I don't know how I will repay the loan." He is now negotiating for a job as a security guard in the state capital, Bengaluru, preparing to leave his farmland behind. For India, the monsoon is more than just a four-month rainy season. It replenishes reservoirs, supports agriculture and helps sustain water supplies and power generation across much of the country.
More importantly, nearly half of India's workforce depends on farming for their livelihood, doing jobs that are both tough and economically insecure. This time, the country received 759.4 millimeters of rain between June and September, against a long-term average of 868.6 millimeters. The 12.6% deficit made it the country's driest monsoon in 11 years and the fourth driest this century.
Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, a climate scientist and former secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said the main factor behind the poor monsoon was a severe El Nino. He had warned earlier that it posed a serious risk to rainfall. "As far as the Indian monsoon is concerned, El Nino is the most important influencing factor, which we should consider very seriously,” Rajeevan told DW.
The effects are now hitting India's water and energy systems. The country's major reservoirs ended the monsoon with less water than usual, leaving both farmers and the power sector with less of a buffer going into the months ahead. Combined storage in the 178 reservoirs monitored by the Central Water Commission stood at 132.7 billion cubic meters, below the 10-year average of 151.1 billion cubic meters.
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