The Forecast of the Indian Monsoon Rains

Abstract

AFTER an interval of twelve more or less prosperous years, following on the memorable Madras famine of 1876-77, and the drought and fearful mortality of North-Western India in 1877-78, India seems once more to have entered on one of those prolonged series of adverse seasons which put a severe strain on the protective powers of its Government, and, despite all human precaution, bring suffering, disease, and premature death to thousands of its industrious peasants, and to even larger numbers of the impoverished outcasts who form the lowest fringe of its teeming population, fighting the precarious battle of their life at all times on the verge of destitution. The drought in Ganjam in the autumn of 1889 has been followed by the failure of the late autumnal rains over the central districts of the Carnatic towards the close of last year, and the too familiar machinery of relief works for the able-bodied, and doles of food to the helpless indigent, has been in active operation for several months past in the districts around Madras. Another monsoon, another season of those periodical rains on which depends the fate of millions, is now due and overdue, and there comes from India an ominous note of warning that there is reason to fear that more than one great province of the empire, or certain portions of them, may again this year lie parched and barren, their young crops withering and shrivelled under the dry west wind, while, month after month, men scan with ever-growing anxiety the pale dust-obscured sky and scattered ball-shaped clouds that never mass themselves to rain-clouds, but mock their hopes with the promise of showers that never fall to moisten the sun-baked soil.