ERRATIC monsoons always make good news copy in India. It is the official weather forecasting agency, the India Meteorological Department (IMD), that bears the brunt of criticism. Sometimes justifiably so, for often its take on the southwest monsoon goes off the mark, as it happened in July this year. IMD said July would have 98 per cent of the rains it normally gets. As if on non-cue, rains stayed away for the best part of the month from many agriculturally important areas such as the north and north-western regions of the country.

In jumped Kapil Sibal, minister of state for science and technology (independent charge). Coming to the rescue of the moribund agency, he said the fault lies with obsolete and aged equipment used to gather weather data. To rectify this, he has sought Rs 500 crore for state-of-the-art gadgets.

The need to replace archaic, manually-read instruments with ones that have digital sensors is understandable. But a question remains: are machines the only problem that bugs the monsoon forecasting system? Could it have more to do with humanpower?

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