I
have been waiting patiently for quite a while now and speaking frankly at this
time of year I wouldn’t be wrong if I said that some degree of honesty from the
government would be highly appreciated regarding the great Indian monsoon.
The signs are out there aplenty to suggest that this year the monsoon is a failure.
The crops aren’t being sown yet, the canals are empty, most importantly it’s not raining, and the water is not
there.
It
is extremely irritating to see the government’s Agriculture Ministry brow
beating all the way around the bush with statement after statement saying that
the monsoon will pick up. In our last look at the monsoon we said that we are
one step away from declaring that the monsoon is a failure. Today we can indeed
say that the rains are not coming this year. However the government has to
simply call the situation. Once it declares a drought situation, the country
can move on.
What
we are instead seeing is a political soap opera for needless reasons, the ones
who end up paying the price are a.)The Farmers
b.)The Consumers.
A
few days ago we told you about India’s
battle with the rain gods. As the battle continues India’s farmers are
increasingly facing the certainty that in the next few weeks they will have to
hear the dreaded words that the water bearing monsoons have indeed failed. This
bit of information as far as the officials in the Indian government including
the Agriculture Minister is still “too premature”. We have to assume that the
monsoons despite having revived a bit in the last three days are going to be
sub par. The worst case scenario will be that the country is heading towards a
drought.
One US analyst said it best when
asked about the outcome of the recently failed WTO talks in Geneva “Success or failure of the Doha Round may
very well lie in the hands of Kamal Nath alone”.While he did make this
statement a few days before the talks were officially declared as a failure, he
was definitely right.
For probably the first time in
history three developing countries dictated the pace of the trade talks at Geneva.
This year was perhaps special for them simply because when the entire issue
being discussed began in 2001 in Doha they were merely participants but today
they pretty much hold the key to World trade.
One US analyst said it best when
asked about the outcome of the recently failed WTO talks in Geneva “Success or failure of the Doha Round may
very well lie in the hands of Kamal Nath alone”.While he did make this
statement a few days before the talks were officially declared as a failure, he
was definitely right.
