# What does El Nino do to India? > It roughly doubles the odds of a weak monsoon, yet many El Nino years still finished wet. The Indian Ocean, irrigation and food stocks all soften the blow. **El Nino is a warning light, not a verdict on the monsoon** Since 1950, monsoons during an El Nino averaged 3.2% below the long-period normal, against a surplus in La Nina years. But that average hides a wide scatter: 8 of 26 El Nino monsoons fell more than 10% short, while 2002 saw a 20.9% deficit with barely any food-price spike. Whether a drought turns into a crisis depends on the strength of the Pacific warming, the state of the Indian Ocean, the buffer stocks in government warehouses, and the reach of irrigation. El Nino loads the dice. It does not throw them. ## Why look at 125 years of monsoon rainfall? The India Meteorological Department has tracked every June-to-September monsoon since 1901. That record shows a system that never repeats: a deficit of 13.8% in 1901, a surplus of 7.8% in 2025, and every shade in between. The monsoon delivers roughly 70% of India’s yearly rain, and its long-period average is about 88 cm. But the average is just a number. This chart, as stripes, makes visible the relentless irregularity that sits behind every farmer’s anxiety. Some years the sky opens; some years it stutters. No two are alike. That is the raw material that El Nino interacts with, a baseline of constant surprise. ## How do we track the monsoon's ups and downs year by year? Stripes are good for seeing the sequence, but a line chart shows how one season’s rain follows the next. From 4.2% above normal in 1950 to the 7.8% of 2025, the line swings above and below the zero mark. Sequences matter: a run of good years fills reservoirs and builds confidence, while a dry year after a good one hurts less. The chart also sets up the El Nino years we will shade later. For now, notice that the monsoon’s tendency is to oscillate, not to stick to any one pattern for long. That is why picking out a single cause is hard. ## So does El Nino make the monsoon drier? Group every monsoon since 1950 by the Pacific’s state at the time, and average the rainfall departure. In the 26 years when El Nino was active at any point in the season, the all-India rain came in 3.2% below the long-period normal. That is still inside IMD’s ‘normal’ band of roughly ±10%, but it is the driest of the three. Neutral years averaged a 2% surplus, and La Nina years, when the Pacific is unusually cool, a 5.9% surplus. The count of years that fell below zero rain departure tells the same story: 15 of 26 El Nino seasons, against 9 of 27 neutral and only 4 of 23 La Nina. The Pacific tilts the scale. ## How much does El Nino raise the risk of a poor monsoon? Not every dry monsoon is a crisis. The Ministry’s worry threshold is usually a departure of more than 10% below normal. In the period since 1950, 57.7% of El Nino years fell below normal, nearly double the share in neutral years (33.3%) and more than triple the share in La Nina years (17.4%). For deeper deficits, the gap widens: 30.8% of El Nino years saw a deficit greater than 10%, against 7.4% of neutral and only 4.3% of La Nina. So yes, El Nino roughly doubles the odds of a weak monsoon. But it is not deterministic: 11 of 26 El Nino monsoons still finished above normal. ## Is the El Nino link really as mild as -3.2% rain? The number that gets quoted depends on the rulebook. The widest count, any El Nino brushing the season, gives the -3.2% average over 26 years. But if you count only those monsoons when the Pacific stayed in El Nino through all four months, the average deficit deepens to -6.8% over 17 years, and below-normal years rise to 71%. Focus on the strongest events, and the average is -12.1% across 7 years. In other words, the bottom-line number is a choice. The El Nino monsoons people remember, 1972 and 2002, are worse than the headline suggests. ## Has the El Nino-monsoon relationship been changing? In the late 1990s, scientists noted that the Pacific’s influence on the Indian monsoon seemed to be weakening. This chart tracks the relationship as a 21-year rolling correlation between the ONI and monsoon rainfall. The correlation does wobble: it weakened to its weakest near the late 1990s, then tightened again through the 2000s and 2010s. By the 2015 window, the correlation was -0.64, meaning the Pacific’s warming and India’s drying still move together, but not as strongly as in some earlier periods. The lesson: the historical base rate is a guide, not a guarantee, for the current year. ## Is the Pacific the only ocean that matters? No. Right beside India, the Indian Ocean has its own temperature seesaw, the Indian Ocean Dipole or IOD. When its western half near Africa warms and its eastern half cools, the resulting difference in sea temperatures (measured by the Dipole Mode Index, or DMI) can pull rain into the monsoon. The chart here places the Pacific’s ONI and the IOD’s DMI on the same timeline. They often swing differently. A positive IOD can fight a drying Pacific, while a negative IOD can make a weak monsoon worse. Watching only the Pacific is like listening with one ear. ## Can a warm Indian Ocean offset a dry Pacific? This chart splits the El Nino monsoons into two groups: those with a positive IOD and those without. When an El Nino monsoon coincided with a positive dipole, the all-India rainfall averaged just -0.3%, essentially normal. Without a positive dipole, the average slipped to -3.9%. The sample is small, only 5 years, but the hint is clear: the Indian Ocean can push back. The textbook example is 1997, a record El Nino with a strong positive IOD, and the monsoon held. Yet it is not a perfect shield; 1972 was a severe drought even with a positive dipole. ## So which El Nino years came out wet? If the article stopped at the drought years, it would mislead. A large minority of El Nino monsoons finished near-normal or surplus. The top exception was 1958, with a 14% surplus, despite a moderate El Nino and a negative IOD. 1953 delivered a 10.7% surplus, and 1963 a 4.4% surplus. Even 1991, a year of economic crisis, saw only a -1.4% rainfall deviation. These years remind us that El Nino is not a sentence. The monsoon has other drivers, and sometimes they win. ## Which El Nino years brought the worst droughts? This is the guardrail chart. The worst El Nino monsoons on record are benchmarks against which 2026 will be measured. 1972 stands first, with a 22.3% deficit, followed by 2002 at 20.9%. 1965 lost 18.6%, and 2009 shed 18.3%. These were the years when the monsoon failed badly. 1972 and 2002 also bracket a shift in the economy: the share of agriculture in GDP had shrunk by the 2000s, so the macroeconomic blow was less. But for the farmer in Bundelkhand or Marathwada, the rainfall number on the gauge was the same stark shortfall. ## Does El Nino hit all of India the same way? No. The all-India number conceals large differences. This chart splits the El Nino years into the four IMD homogeneous regions and shows each region’s rainfall departure as a separate line. The northwest, the wheat-and-pulses belt, often swings deepest into deficit, while the south peninsula can stay close to normal. In 1951, the northwest lost 27.9% while the south lost only 6.7%. In 2023, the all-India number was -5.3%, but the northeast plunged to -17.5% even as the northwest gained 1.2%. India does not eat an average. ## Which part of India loses the most rain? Averaging the 17 El Nino monsoons where the Pacific stayed warm all season, the northwest lost 14.2% of its typical rain, nearly double the all-India figure of -6.8%. Central India lost 9.4%, and the south peninsula 7.4%. The northwest is the most monsoon-dependent for its kharif crops, so this extra dryness matters for pulses, cotton and millets. The pattern arises because El Nino weakens the monsoon trough and the rain-bearing systems that travel up the Gangetic plain into the northwest. ## When in the season the rain goes missing In El Nino monsoons, the rain shortfall concentrates at the two ends: June, the onset month, runs 10.3% below a typical June, and September, the withdrawal month, runs 10.8% below. July is a bit better at -6.1%, and August holds up best at -2.7%. A weak June means sowing is delayed; a dry September saps the final fill of the grain. The middle months can partially recover, but a late start often sets the crop behind. The monthly chart explains how a season with a modest overall deficit can still damage the harvest, if the rain is missing when it is needed most. ## Where El Nino actually cuts the rice harvest The rainfall map tells one story; the harvest map tells another. This choropleth shows the average change in kharif rice yield during El Nino years, measured against the crop’s own five-year normal. The damage clusters in the rainfed rice belt of eastern India, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, where yields typically fall below their recent average. Meanwhile, heavily irrigated Punjab and Haryana often register yields above normal. The all-India rice yield across El Nino years is nearly flat, but that average hides a geography of winners and losers. The rice that feeds the public distribution system is largely irrigated and less vulnerable; the rice a sharecropper in Jharkhand depends on is rainfed and more exposed. ## Why the rainfall map is not the yield map This chart drives the point home by comparing two crops in the same regions. In the northwest, rice, over 90% irrigated, averaged a 7.3% yield gain during El Nino monsoons, even though that same region lost the most monsoon rain. But rainfed coarse cereals in the northwest, like bajra and jowar, fell 11.8% below their recent normal. Across the rest of India, the contrast is similar but less extreme. Canals and tubewells decouple yields from rainfall. The lesson is simple: the Pacific decides how much rain falls; irrigation decides how much that rain matters for the harvest. ## Which crops El Nino actually hits Groundnut, a rainfed oilseed, saw an 8.3% drop in yield during El Nino years. Sorghum and pearl millet followed at -7.3% and -6.8%. Pigeonpea, a pulse that often grows on residual moisture, was down 5.1%. At the other end, rice was nearly flat, and sugarcane, which is mostly irrigated, edged up 1.7%. The largest damage is to the crops that drink straight from the clouds, oilseeds, millets and pulses. These are precisely the foods where prices can spike after a weak monsoon. ## Does the monsoon still determine how much grain we grow? More than seven decades of crop data say yes. The correlation between monsoon rainfall and foodgrain output is 0.71, a strong, positive link. For rice, it is the same 0.71. For oilseeds it is 0.66, and for pulses 0.41. Wheat, which grows in the winter, is weakly linked at 0.37. These numbers mean that when the monsoon does well, foodgrain production rises, and when it falters, production often dips. The connection is not perfect, irrigation, temperature and policy intervene, but the monsoon remains the broad basis of India’s food supply. ## Does El Nino really hurt farm output? Looked at through the national accounts, the answer is mixed. Real agricultural GVA growth averaged 3.1% per year in El Nino monsoon years, against 3.2% in neutral years and a brisk 6.3% in La Nina years. So farm output does grow more slowly when the Pacific is warm, but the average drag is modest. Much of agriculture, dairy, horticulture, winter crops, is not directly hit by the summer monsoon. And in a big El Nino year, the growth can still be positive, as in 1997. The aggregate hides the deeper pain in specific regions and crops. ## What crops does India have in stock before the 2026 monsoon? Whether a weak monsoon turns into a food-price shock depends partly on the stockpile. The latest government estimates for the 2025-26 crop year put foodgrain production at 3,765.63 lakh tonnes, rice at 1,540.24 lakh tonnes, wheat at 1,206.57 lakh tonnes and pulses at 274.09 lakh tonnes. Oilseeds are estimated at 430.59 lakh tonnes. These numbers are near records. Large public buffer stocks of rice and wheat, in particular, mean that a single poor kharif is unlikely to empty the shelves. But they do not guarantee immunity from a spike in perishables like vegetables and pulses. ## Does a weak monsoon always push food prices up? No. The eight El Nino monsoons since 1982 produced post-monsoon wholesale food inflation ranging from near zero in 2002, the worst drought of that span, to 16.9% in 2009, a severe drought, to 23.1% in 1991, a near-normal monsoon year. 2002 saw a 20.9% rain deficit yet barely any food inflation because large public grain stocks and a global commodity lull held prices down. The monsoon is a trigger, but prices also answer to stocks, trade policy and global markets. ## Which foods get more expensive after an El Nino? Food is not one thing. In 2009, with an 18.3% rain deficit, cereals rose 14.5%, pulses surged 32.6%, and onions jumped 29.2%. By contrast, in 2002, despite a worse 20.9% deficit, pulses fell 5.3% and onions dropped 4.9%. Cereals often move little across droughts, sheltered by public stocks and procurement. The sharp spikes are in vegetables and pulses, where supply is more local and less storable. This is why food inflation after a drought is a story of a few specific items, not a uniform rise. ## Is El Nino the main cause of food inflation in India? Look at the long sweep of inflation since 1960, with El Nino monsoon years shaded. The tallest peak of headline CPI, nearly 28% in 1974, was an oil shock, not an El Nino. The 1991 spike owed more to a balance-of-payments crisis and rupee devaluation. The wholesale-food line, which starts in 1983, climbs in some but not all shaded years. The retail-food line, available from 2012, sits below the wholesale line where they overlap. El Nino is a contributor, but it is not the master switch. Oil prices, global food markets, public stocks and trade policy all get a vote. ## Why does a bad monsoon matter less for GDP but still so much for people? Agriculture’s share of India’s gross value added has fallen from over 60% in 1951 to about 14% today. So an identical rainfall miss now moves headline GDP much less. But the share of India’s workers still in farming has fallen far more slowly, from 63% in 1991 to about 42% in 2025. That gap between the two lines is the human heart of the monsoon question. A drought is a small event for the GDP growth rate and a large event for millions of livelihoods. Food still takes a big slice of poor households’ budgets, so the monsoon sets rural incomes and the price of a meal even when it barely dents the growth figure. ## Where these numbers come from The monsoon rainfall figures come from the India Meteorological Department’s Pune office, which has maintained the all-India record since 1901. Ocean temperatures are from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ONI and DMI indices. Crop output and yield data are from the Ministry of Agriculture’s DES and UPAg estimates, and district-level yields are from ICRISAT’s district database. National accounts and wholesale prices are from the Reserve Bank of India’s DBIE. The retail food CPI is from MOSPI. Each phase or anomaly is measured against that series’ own baseline. Correlations are descriptive, not causal. The 2026 monsoon forecast is a live projection, not a completed year. ## Sources - IMD Pune: all-India and regional southwest monsoon rainfall, 1901-2025. - NOAA: Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) and Dipole Mode Index (DMI), 1950-2025. - RBI DBIE: wholesale price indices and national accounts (agricultural GVA). - ICRISAT District Level Database: crop yields for kharif rice, coarse cereals, and other crops. - UPAg: Third Advance Estimates of crop production, 2025-26. - World Bank: employment in agriculture and CPI inflation. --- Source: [This Indian Life](https://thisindianlife.today/articles/what-el-nino-does-to-india/) · Updated 2026-06-06. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Please cite as "This Indian Life — https://thisindianlife.today".