Rainfall Deficit and Climate Risk in India: This Year and in Years to Come

Rainfall Deficit in India 2026: The Uneven Sowing Shock

The southwest monsoon in India has begun on a weak footing. Rainfall during June was around 40% below the long-period average, and kharif sowing is consequently running 23% behind last year’s pace.

At first glance, this appears to be a nationwide agricultural slowdown. A closer examination of satellite data, however, tells a different story. Bihar has witnessed the sharpest decline, with sowing down 83.3%, followed by Telangana and Jharkhand (72.5% each) and Maharashtra (60.3%). Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Karnataka have all recorded declines ranging from 34% to 52%. And sowing is up compared to previous year in case of Punjab (+107.4%), Haryana (+38.8%) and sowing has progressed faster than the previous year in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh as well.

In other words, large parts of India are performing far worse than the national average, while several irrigated states have continued sowing despite deficient rainfall.

This immediately raises an important question. If rainfall has been weak almost everywhere, why are some states able to continue sowing while others have almost come to a standstill?

Irrigation Explains Part of the Story – but Not All of It

The most obvious explanation is irrigation coverage. States with extensive and well-developed irrigation infrastructure – Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and, increasingly, Madhya Pradesh – have displayed considerably greater resilience. Irrigation reduces dependence on the arrival of the monsoon, allowing farmers to proceed with sowing even when rainfall is delayed.

At first sight, this appears to explain the regional differences. Yet the data reveal an important anomaly. Bihar officially reports irrigation coverage that is higher than the national average, but it is also the state with the largest decline in sowing. Clearly, irrigation coverage alone cannot explain agricultural resilience.

The more relevant question is not whether irrigation exists, but whether farmers can access irrigation water when they need it.

Access to Water Matters More Than the Availability of Water

The distinction between water availability and water access is becoming increasingly important. Bihar’s irrigation system is fundamentally different from the canal-based systems found in north-western India. About 65% of the irrigation in Bihar is dependent on shallow tube wells powered by diesel pumps rather than large public canal networks (like, say in Punjab).

This changes the economics of irrigation. Many farmers own relatively inexpensive centrifugal surface pumps. These pumps function well when groundwater levels remain high. However, once groundwater falls below roughly six to seven metres during the pre-monsoon season, centrifugal pumps lose suction and stop working. Only submersible pumps can lift water from greater depths.

Submersible pumps solve the engineering problem but create a financial one. They cost roughly significantly more than conventional surface pumps. For many smallholders, this capital investment is unaffordable. As a result, groundwater may still be physically abundant beneath the surface (at slightly lower levels), but access increasingly becomes restricted to farmers who can afford submersible pumps. Therefore, the problem is not necessarily groundwater scarcity. It is unequal ability to tap groundwater.

Irrigation Can Also Become Too Expensive to Use

Even where irrigation equipment exists, farmers may choose not to use it. Diesel-powered irrigation is expensive, particularly for water-intensive crops such as paddy. Every irrigation cycle increases fuel costs, creating an incentive to postpone pumping until rainfall arrives. This behaviour is supported in the government’s own advisory, which recommended delaying paddy transplantation until cumulative rainfall reaches around 75–100 mm. Implicitly, this acknowledges that irrigation infrastructure is not fully substituting for rainfall. Farmers continue to time their sowing around the arrival of the monsoon because pumping remains economically costly.

However, the danger is that waiting for rain can push sowing beyond the crop’s optimal planting window.

The Poorest Farmers Face the Highest Irrigation Costs

Many farmers do not own irrigation pumps at all. Instead, they purchase irrigation water from neighbouring farmers who own wells and pumps. Although electricity used for irrigation may be subsidised, rented irrigation water is supplied through private markets and therefore reflects commercial pricing.

Ironically, this means that the poorest farmers, who can not even afford pumps, often pay the highest effective price for water. In years of delayed rainfall, these costs rise further as demand for irrigation increases while the number of functioning pumps remains limited. Consequently, climate shocks amplify existing inequalities within rural economies rather than affecting all farmers equally.

Recovery for this year Depends on Crop Biology, Not Just Rainfall

So, as of now, we have just looked at June data and not everything is lost. The monsoon season is still continuing. If rains can “catch up”, sowing should recover. But, the reality is that even if rainfall improves during July, not every crop can recover equally. Each crop has its own biological sowing window, and once that window closes, later rainfall cannot fully restore production. Some examples below:

Rice remains relatively resilient because most transplantation normally occurs during July. If eastern India (and hence Bihar) receives adequate rainfall over the coming weeks, a substantial proportion of delayed acreage can still be recovered. So, Bihar could potentially make up and get back on track.

Cotton also retains meaningful recovery potential because its sowing window extends into mid-July. Current delays therefore represent deferred timelines rather than permanent loss, provided rainfall improves soon.

Soybean presents a much more difficult challenge. Its sowing window closes relatively early, and flowering is controlled by day length rather than planting date. Delayed sowing therefore leads to permanently lower yields. Much of the current acreage deficit is unlikely to be recovered, increasing the likelihood of higher edible oil imports later in the year.

Tur (arhar), a type of pulses, faces a similar biological constraint. Delayed sowing shifts flowering and grain filling into cooler months, reducing yields even if acreage eventually recovers. This creates one of the fastest transmission channels from weather shocks to higher retail pulse prices.

Rainfall Alone No Longer Determines Food Inflation

Even a significant improvement in rainfall during July may not completely de-risk the agricultural season. HSBC’s analysis suggests that temperature, rather than rainfall, has become the dominant driver of food inflation during El Niño years. Rising temperatures reduce crop productivity even when irrigation water is available, while heat stress lowers yields independently of rainfall. This represents an important structural shift.

Historically, good monsoon rainfall was often sufficient to alleviate inflation concerns. Today, rainfall recovery addresses only one part of the problem. Elevated temperatures continue to suppress productivity, particularly for heat-sensitive crops, creating inflationary pressures that persist even after rainfall normalises.

The implication is that India’s agricultural risks are no longer driven by rainfall alone. They emerge from the interaction of rainfall, groundwater access, irrigation technology, energy costs and crop biology. Understanding these interconnected regional ecosystems is becoming essential for assessing farm incomes, rural credit quality, business viability and food inflation.

The El Nino “Myth”

The media narratives around El Nino for India have pointed at the inevitability of weak monsoons this year blaming El Nino. However, data says otherwise. As per official estimates, Since 1950, there have been 16 El Niño years, out of which 7 years had impacted Indian monsoon rainfall when rainfall was below normal.

What are the lessons for businesses, financial institutions and policy makers?

The central lesson emerging from these analyses is that India’s agricultural economy is becoming increasingly heterogeneous. Climate risk is no longer simply a question of how much rain falls nationally.

It is increasingly determined by where and when rainfall arrives, where temperatures exceed biological thresholds, which crops dominate local farming regions, whether irrigation infrastructure exists to buffer climatic shocks and whether the irrigation infrastructure creates equal access to water.

For policymakers, this demands geographically targeted intervention. For lenders, it requires regional ecosystem based credit assessment. For businesses, it means recognising that supply chain shocks and future opportunities will be driven less by national averages than by regional climate resilience and region specific factors.

Unless dealt through regionally nuanced policy support, there is a possibility that we will see widening economic gap between regions capable of adapting to climate volatility and those that remain dependent on increasingly unpredictable weather.

Moreover, unless businesses adjust their strategy based on regional characteristics, they will be more prone to weather shocks. While these regional variations existed earlier, the increasing volatility of the weather will be making more organisations fragile. Can organisations adjust their strategy to not just be resilient but benefit from the volatility to be what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call Antifragile?

This article synthesises ICRA Research’s “Southwest Monsoon and Agriculture” (July 2026), HSBC’s “India: Forget the Rains” (18 May 2026), and an independent satellite-based sowing analysis by Satsure team, “Sixteen States, One Misleading Number” (2 July 2026) and Commentary (1,2) by Avinash Kishore (Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI). Figures and forecasts belong to the respective sources. I recommend going through the individual sources in detail for a more comprehensive understanding of the context.