Kochi, June 18
Ramesh a farmer looks up daily to the dark clouds hovering over his fields in the hope that they will pour quite heavily today, but for his surprise his dreams gets washed away daily. He say’s if rain does not occurs in the couple of weeks, then he may have to look for some other source for water to irrigate this fields. Its almost seventeen days after the monsoon has set in over Kerala, but the rain gods seems not yet pleased with the ‘God’s own country’.
The state is still desperately waiting for the normal rain which has been the important factor for the seasonal crops and also the main source for the power generation in Kerala. If we look back, we can find that last year by this time rains were on its full, but like previous year this time rain gods does not seems so pleased with this tourist paradise (Kerala).
So far the state has experienced a scantly rainfall which is well below the normal rains in the state. The major concern apart from water for irrigating the seasonal crops is the big factor, power generation. If we put across all the reservoirs together, the capacity of the water as of now is sufficient to generate only 666.83 million units of power. The current level of water is still not adequate to overcome the demand for power for the state.
The State Electricity Department has started half-an-hour power cuts for the state. To so how reduce the daily demand of power and conserve some units of power to make sure if rains continuous in the same way then the electricity department could handle the situation well.
With such a poor start of the monsoon, apart from the meteorological department even the people of Kerala are a bit surprised. Though monsoon had broken all records this year, first with an unexpected pre-monsoon in rest part of India, leaving Kerala behind with a substantially late monsoon. But still people and met departments are hoping for a normal monsoon in the state this year too.
