NEW DELHI — India is expected to receive at least 10 percent less rain this June-to-September monsoon season, hurting millions of famers in this largely agrarian country, the country's Meteorological Department said. The shortfall also is expected to swell electricity demand in a power-starved nation as farmers turn to irrigation pumps to keep their fields watered. Earlier this week, three of India's regional electricity grids failed for hours in a blackout that affected a swath of the country with about 620 million people. The department said rains between June and Aug. 1 have been 19 percent below normal. The remaining August to September monsoon will also be weak because of the impact of warming of the central Pacific Ocean, known as the El Nino, the agency said. Several Indian states have already declared near-drought conditions and are demanding extra federal funds or are announcing large subsidies to help farmers buy diesel fuel to generate electricity to irrigate their fields. Officials in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh — India's most populous — fear that a drought is around the corner. Amarnath Sharma, a rice farmer in the state, said he is late with planting his rice and that if it did not rain in the next few days he would have to forgo a rice crop this year. “At this time of the year we generally make preparations to tackle floods but paucity of rain has raised an apprehension about drought engulfing the major part of the state,” Agriculture Production Commissioner Alok Ranjan told The Associated Press in the state capital Lucknow on Friday. In the country's eastern state of Bihar at least eight out of 38 districts have received rains 70 percent below normal, said Anil Kumar Jha, the deputy director of the state's agriculture department. Jha said the state was spending Rs6.19 billion ($112 million) on subsidizing diesel so that farmers could generate electricity to draw up ground water. A poor monsoon sends ripples across the Indian economy because about 60 percent of the country's population works in agriculture and over half of the farmlands are rain-fed with much of the rest irrigated from rapidly depleting underground aquifers. The sector contributes up to 20 percent to India's gross domestic product. — AP
