It might sound hard to digest but the United States has agreed to help India predict and track the monsoons better by providing imagery from its satellites.The advanced satellite images will help India track the monsoon changes with a greater degree of certainty.
The US has agreed to provide India with imagery from its satellites on weather patterns over the Indian Ocean and the subcontinent that will allow scientists to predict rainfall 15 days in advance. At present, Indian scientists can predict the monsoons only one-and-a-half days in advance.It will also supply India a supercomputer that can analyse and interpret the satellite images. (Source: HT)
With agriculture still a healthy contributor to India’s GDP , monsoons play a vital role in ensuring a healthy agricultural output.The Indian agriculture sector still depends a lot on the monsoons for irrigation and unpredictable monsoons can cause serious economic difficulties.An advanced technical expertise could just be the thing India needed to ensure right prediction of monsoons.
Unpredictable monsoons have always been a cause of worry for Indian agriculture sector.The lack of rains/floods in various  parts of the country not only cause economic troubles to the farmers, it also increases the import burden for the government.Moreover, the Indian Meteorological department has been ill equipped to provide the right guidance for the farmers to plan their product.
With the new systems in place, the meteorological department will be able to predict monsoon 15 days well in advance with greater certainty.The U.S. help in terms of technical expertise and advanced sattelite imagery will turn out to be a great help for the Indian Met Department.
Agriculture contributes around ~17% to the total GDP of India.If the farmers are well informed about the state of monsoons, the agriculture sector could very well contribute further in increasing the GDP.
It is heartening to know that the United States is extending its helping hand to India in small but subtle ways.Recently, San Francisco choose Bangalore as its Sister city to help the city with waste and traffic management.India could definitely use an extra helping hand to steer itself forward.
Comments
This is a great piece of news. Now the onus is on India to use this information to the maximum.
True Pooja.We need to make maximum use of any technological help that we are offered.
What a pity ! India still has to depend on the US for weather forecasting… and, with ambitions like the CHANDRAYAAN. US – Senator Charles Schumer just gave a derogatory title for the much revered Indian IT-MNCs’. He called Infosys, TCS and WIPRO “chop-shops”. US wants everything cheap from India and China, so that they can make super-profits. Indians working in the US are nothing but cheap bonded labour. When India has the ability to launch its own satellites, why should US help? The only reason US wants to help is to sell their ware… exorbitantly. India should not fall for this trap. Stop Chandrayaan… make weather satellites.