“The Indian budget is a gamble on the monsoon” is a clichéd statement that has been made repeatedly for more than a hundred years. Even very recently, when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the budget for the fiscal year 2011-12 to the Indian parliament, he had to invoke the blessings of Lord Indra, the god of rain, although he did not precisely call his budget a gamble.

The gamble comes into the game because of four factors:
(1) the Indian fiscal year begins on 1 April and ends on 31 March of the next year,
(2) the budget for the fiscal year has to be prepared by February end,
(3) the southwest monsoon arrives over the country on 1 June on an average, and
(4) it has never been possible to make a successful prediction of an all-India drought.

The QUANTUM and distribution of the southwest monsoon rains over India during June to September largely determines the agricultural production during the kharif SEASON. Even in the rabi season the crop production is dependent on the amount of moisture left over in the soil after the cessation of monsoon rains. In a good monsoon year, crops give bountiful yields, farmers’ incomes soar, their purchasing power rises, and industry responds. In a drought year, crops wilt, animals perish, the POPULATION has to be fed out of buffer stocks, farmers have to be bailed out, and industry suffers. Whatever ONE MAY talk about monsoon-proofing the Indian economy, that the “Indian budget is a gamble on the monsoon” says it all.