The years 1965 and 1966 will be remembered in Indian history as two successive years in which the failure of the south-west monsoon had a disastrous effect on Indian economy. This article is an attempt to find out the basic causes of this large-scale deficiency in the monsoon rainfall.

The outstanding feature of Indian weather in the second half of April and the first week of May of the year was the extremely high temperatures over a large part of Northern India.