There is something wrong with rainfall patterns in Bihar!

I downloaded hundred years (1901-2002) of annual rainfall data from India Water Portal for north-west Bihar (covering districts of Paschim Champaran, Purbi Champaran, Gopalganj, Muzaffarpur, parts of Sitamarhi, Sheohar and Vaishali) and plotted it to discern trends. What I found was truly shocking. There has been a massive decline in annual rainfall in this part of Bihar in last fifteen years. For example, mean annual rainfall in Muzaffarpur and neighboring areas is 1131.67 mm with a standard deviation of 208.45 mm. Annual precipitation was higher than the one hundred year average in 50 out of 87 years between 1901 and 1987, but not once since then. Annual rainfall has been below the long term average every year since 1988. And the deficit is not small or negligible. In twelve out of these fifteen years, precipitation was more than one standard deviation below the hundred year average. For the hundred and one years for which we have rainfall data, there have been only 17 such years when deficit in rainfall was so high. Twelve of these seventeen deficit years have occurred after 1987. Patterns are similar for other districts I looked at.

The deficit is so severe—mean annual rainfall in 1988-2002 period (862 mm) was 26%  (315.93 mm) below the mean annual rainfall in 1901-1987 period (1178 mm)—I am wondering if there is something wrong with the data. Else how can this go unnoticed and unreported? At least, I have not come across anything either from meteorologists or from farmers of Bihar who would have been most severely affected. 

नयी सरफरोशी, नयी तमन्ना: पियूष मिश्रा (गुलाल)

Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal (2009) seems to be a fascinating movie, at least the songs are. The lyrics are like I have never seen in hindi movies: dark, hard hitting, quirky. And yet poetic. Read his rewording of the iconic song:  Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna Ab Hamare Dil Mein hai. You will see what I am talking about.  Lightly composed, the wrods do not get drowned in music and special effects. Piyish Mishra, the singer, song writer and composer is brilliant.

सरफरोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में हैं
ओ रे बिस्मिल काश आते आज तुम हिन्दुस्तान
देखते की मुल्क सारा यूँ टशन में, थ्रिल में है
आज का लौंडा ये कहता हम तो बिस्मिल थक गए
अपनी आज़ादी तो भैय्या लौंडिया के तिल में हैं
आज के जलसों में बिस्मिल एक गूंगा गा रहा
औ बहरों का वो रेला नाचता महफिल में है
हाथ की खादी बनाने का ज़माना लद गया
आज तो चड्ढी भी सिलती इंग्लिशों के मिल में है ….

I have seen promos of Gulaal on You Tube. It seems there is a bit of Quentin Tarantiono in Anurag Kashyap. Actually, I like Anurag more. The darkness and the violence in Tarantino’s movies is often without purpose; in fact it is the whole purpose itself. Anurag’s movies, on the other hand, have a theme, a message, a reflection of what goes around.  The darkness is his way of presenting it: bare and unadorned. I am looking forward to Gulaal. Chalte-chalte a dialogue from the movie I like a lot:

इस मुल्क ने हर शख्स को जो काम था सौंपा , उस शख्स ने उस काम माचिस जला के छोड़ दी |

India does not mobilise its saving well: The Economist

Compared to other large Asian economies, India depends much less on exports. Exports account for just about one-fifth of India’s GDP. We are also a thrifty country; our gross saving rate reached 37.7% last fiscal year. Yet our economy is just as badly affected by global credit crunch. This week’s Economist tells us why:

“But India does not mobilise its saving well. Households account for almost two-thirds of it. But they put more than half of their spare funds into physical assets, such as homes, rather than the financial system. Of the remainder, 11% is held in cash and 55% is deposited in the banks, which are now lending almost a third of their deposits to the government. Thus despite India’s prodigious thrift, its companies miss foreign investors now they have fled. Of the $135 billion they raised in the fiscal year to March 2008, $40 billion came from foreign lenders and $22 billion came from a stockmarket buoyed by foreign enthusiasm, according to Tushar Poddar of Goldman Sachs. DLF itself raised $2.2 billion in June 2007 in what was then India’s biggest initial public offering.

Those sources of funds have now dwindled, forcing companies to turn to the country’s banks. In a report in January, the RBI calculated that the flow of credit from India’s banks had increased by $7.6 billion so far this fiscal year, compared with the same period of the previous year. But this failed to compensate for the $26.8 billion shortfall in funds from other sources, such as foreign loans and public issues”.

Capitalism Beyond The Crisis: Amartya Sen

Sen concludes”:

“The present economic crises do not, I would argue, call for a “new capitalism,” but they do demand a new understanding of older ideas, such as those of Smith and, nearer our time, of Pigou, many of which have been sadly neglected. What is also needed is a clearheaded perception of how different institutions actually work, and of how a variety of organizations—from the market to the institutions of the state—can go beyond short-term solutions and contribute to producing a more decent economic world”.

Click here for the full article. Long but interesting.