The India Meteorological Department expects a low-pressure system to form over the Bay of Bengal around 11 September and push rain into Gujarat from the 12th, with yellow alerts for Narmada, Tapi, Dang, Navsari and Valsad, and for Bhavnagar and Amreli on 13 September. For farmers watching a monsoon that has run 18 per cent short, that forecast reads like relief. Look at where the rain is due to fall, and the relief stops well short of the districts in the worst trouble.
The gap between the rain and the need
Gujarat’s deficit is not spread evenly across the state. As of 7 September, Devbhoomi Dwarka had received 88 per cent less rain than normal, Porbandar 74 per cent, Jamnagar 62 per cent and Kutch 61 per cent, Down To Earth reported, drawing on state figures. Junagadh was 38 per cent short and Rajkot 35 per cent. In Dwarka taluka the season has produced 15 mm against a normal of 657 mm. Kalyanpur has 33 mm against 967 mm.
The alerts issued this week, reported by TV9 Gujarati, cover south Gujarat, which has had a reasonable season, plus two Saurashtra districts on its eastern side. Dwarka, Porbandar, Jamnagar and Kutch are outside the heavy-rain zone and are expected to get light to moderate showers at best. A spell like that wets the topsoil. It does not refill a dam.
The reservoirs are the real number
Storage tells you what August failed to deliver. Saurashtra’s reservoirs stood at about 50 per cent of capacity on 7 September, with usable storage lower at 48 per cent. Kutch was at 23.8 per cent total and 18.2 per cent usable. Individual reservoirs run far below even that: Devbhoomi Dwarka at 0.8 per cent, Jamnagar at 8.5 per cent, Porbandar at 18.3 per cent, Junagadh at 22.4 per cent. Several small dams, among them Gadki, Sani and Rupavati, are holding nothing at all.
Those percentages set the drinking-water calendar for Saurashtra and Kutch through to next June, not just the irrigation calendar for the standing kharif crop. Municipal supply gets first call on whatever is stored. Farmers get what is left over, and in Dwarka and Jamnagar there is not much left over to argue about.
Why the Narmada fix is harder this year
The standard answer to a dry Saurashtra is the SAUNI scheme, which pipes Narmada water into the region’s dams. Gujarat has already used it this season, sending water towards Jamnagar and Dwarka. The scheme was designed around surplus, though: it moves water that Sardar Sarovar cannot hold once the dam overflows.
Sardar Sarovar sat at about 90.9 per cent of capacity in early September and has not overflowed this year. Water sent to Saurashtra now is water taken from a reservoir that has to last the state twelve months, which is why the state has been prioritising drinking-water releases over irrigation. Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People has made the design point directly: SAUNI was built to divert excess, and there is no excess. Farmers from 27 villages who demanded a release into the Sani dam on 6 August ran into that arithmetic.
What to watch
Three things over the next fortnight. Whether the 12-13 September system tracks further west than the current alerts suggest, which is the only way Dwarka and Porbandar get meaningful rain this season. Whether the state announces a second round of Narmada releases into Saurashtra dams, and on what terms. And whether the government begins the paperwork for scarcity declarations in the worst talukas, which is what unlocks cattle camps, fodder depots and relief for farmers whose kharif crop is already gone.
Rain on 12 September will be reported as the monsoon’s revival. In Kutch and the coastal Saurashtra districts, the season’s shortfall is now too large for a three-day spell to close.
Sources: Down To Earth, TV9 Gujarati
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.