Last week, India received rains it had been waiting for all of June, when the monsoon typically makes landfall. Large parts received intense downpours, more than halving the cumulative seasonal deficit that had climbed to a worrying 40%.
On the face of it, this was a welcome turnaround. Yet, the rains also exposed a deeper problem: they arrived all at once, instead of being staggered as is the norm. These periods of intense bursts of rainfall interspersed with prolonged dry spells are gradually becoming the new normal. So, the basic assumption about the progress of the monsoon, which accounts for over 80% of India's annual precipitation, appears to be broken.
