ABSTRACT
First, our president has urged the need for refraining from making profit out of poor peoples' entitlements. This is a timely warning since thousands of crores will be spent during the coming weeks in drought relief. Unfortunately, disaster relief funds become an easy target for those to whom corruption is a way of life. Second, the Prime Minister has rightly emphasised the need to help farmers in their hour of distress, so that they can help the country to produce as much food as possible under the prevailing meteorological conditions. Third, a crisis management committee has been constituted under the leadership of Pranab Mukherjee, who fortunately belongs to rare group of leaders. Most seriously-affected areasare those where monsoon irregularity has multiple adverse effect on crops, farm animals and human food and livelihood security. Also, hydropower generation is affected, leading to energy shortage. Power shortage in turn makes it difficult to give a crop life-saving irrigation, wherever opportunities for this exist.
