Panorama of colour

1. At a Glance

• "Panorama of colour" is the caption/feature title of a photo page in The Hindu's Chennai print edition (25 Sep 2026, p. 13). Its lead image shows lightning over the Mumbai skyline on 21 Sep, alongside a report of a prolonged dry spell in Maharashtra. [1]
• The UPSC-relevant core is drought: a monsoon-linked agrarian and disaster-management issue, and the legal and fiscal machinery for declaring and financing it. [1][2]
• Caveat: the retrieved article text is mostly site navigation. Only the caption is available, so the wider photo-feature content is not verified.

2. Why in the News

• Several regions of Maharashtra face a prolonged dry spell causing extensive crop loss. [1]
• Maharashtra Cooperation Minister Babasaheb Patil said the government will soon declare "100% drought" in the State. [1]
• The lightning photo (Mumbai, 21 Sep) sits alongside this, showing that localized storms coexist with a seasonal rainfall shortfall. [1]
• Note: "100% drought" is a ministerial phrase. It is not a defined legal category in the sources retrieved.

3. Background & Evolution

• Disaster Management Act, 2005 is the statutory base for disaster funds. [2][3]
• NDRF is constituted under Section 46. [2]

• SDRF is constituted under Section 48(1)(a). [2]

• Drought is one of the notified disasters covered under SDRF. [2]

• A PIB release on revision of SDRF/NDRF norms for drought exists (relid=113417). Its date and details were not retrievable here. [4]

4. Core Static Facts

Item	Fact
Enabling law	Disaster Management Act, 2005 [3]
NDRF	Section 46; wholly funded by the Centre; supplements SDRF for disasters of severe nature if SDRF funds are inadequate [2]
SDRF	Section 48(1)(a); primary fund with States for notified disasters [2]
SDRF contribution	Centre:State = 75:25; 90:10 for North-Eastern and Himalayan States [2]
Drought relief period	Default up to 30 days; extendable to 60 days; up to 90 days in severe drought [2]
Extension beyond limit	State Executive Committee may extend, if expenditure stays within 25% of the year's SDRF allocation [2]
Nodal ministry	Ministry of Home Affairs (disaster-management guidelines are hosted on mha.gov.in) [3]

5. Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Economic

• Crop loss hits farm incomes and rural demand. The article reports "extensive crop loss". [1]
• SDRF and NDRF are the main relief channels, and their norms cap the duration of assistance. [2]

Legal / Constitutional

• The Disaster Management Act, 2005 creates parallel Central (NDRF) and State (SDRF) funds. [2][3]
• State Executive Committees have flexibility to extend relief periods, subject to a 25% ceiling. [2]

Administrative / Federal

• The State declares drought, while the Centre supplements. The funding ratio is 75:25, or 90:10 for special-category regions. [2]
• Political statements ("100% drought") precede formal notification. [1]

Environmental

• Erratic rainfall, with dry spells alongside intense localized storms such as lightning, is consistent with climate variability. [1] Attribution to climate change is not established in the sources.

6. Recent Developments (last 12-18 months)

• 21 Sep 2026: lightning over Mumbai, photographed amid a prolonged Maharashtra dry spell. [1]
• ~24-25 Sep 2026: Minister Babasaheb Patil said the State will soon declare 100% drought. [1]
• Not found in the sources: the actual notification, the central team visit, and any NDRF assistance.

7. Prelims Hooks

• NDRF is constituted under Section 46 of the DM Act, 2005. [2]
• SDRF is constituted under Section 48(1)(a) of the DM Act, 2005. [2]
• SDRF contribution ratio is 75:25 (Centre:State) for general States. [2]
• For North-Eastern and Himalayan States the SDRF ratio is 90:10. [2]
• NDRF is funded entirely by the Centre. [2]
• The default relief period for drought is 30 days, extendable to 60, and to 90 in severe drought. [2]
• Extension beyond the prescribed period is capped at 25% of the annual SDRF allocation. [2]
• Drought is a notified disaster under SDRF. [2]
• The Maharashtra Cooperation Minister quoted in the article is Babasaheb Patil. [1]

8. Why Saying "100% Drought" Does Not Bring Central Money

• A State can declare drought on its own, but only one grade of drought unlocks Central funds
• The Manual for Drought Management, 2016 sorts drought into normal, moderate and severe [5].
• Money from the NDRF (the Centre's fund) can be asked for only when the drought is graded "severe" [5].

• So a minister's words like "100% drought" [1] change nothing until the grading is done. A "moderate" grade means the State pays from its own SDRF [2][5].

• The grading rule is hard to satisfy

• The Manual uses five things to judge drought: rainfall, agriculture, soil moisture, hydrology (water in wells and dams) and remote sensing (crop health seen from satellites). Rainfall is compulsory; the other four are called impact indicators [5].
• For "severe", at least three impact indicators must themselves be in the severe class. For "moderate", two [5].

• Farm experts say the three rarely turn severe at the same time, so districts with real crop loss still come out as "moderate" [5].

• What a "moderate" grade actually gives a farmer

• The Yavatmal Collector described it plainly: postponing electricity bill recovery and delaying land revenue collection [5].
• No crop-loss compensation from the Centre follows from that grade.

9. The Last Time Maharashtra Tried This, 14,679 Villages Got Nothing

• Two different rulers are used to measure the same drought
• Maharashtra has an old State method called paisewari — if a village's crop yield falls below 50% of its 10-year average, it counts as drought-hit [5].
• In 2017-18, 14,679 villages in Maharashtra crossed that paisewari line [5].

• Under the Centre's 2016 Manual, none of them qualified for central assistance [5].

• The gap is not small, and the State pays for it

• Eight talukas across Yavatmal, Washim and Jalgaon were declared only "moderate" in April 2018, even with rainfall shortfalls of -44% in July, -49% in August and -34% in September, and rabi sowing halved from 0.22 to 0.11 million hectares [5].

• Chandrapur got no central relief either, so Maharashtra paid on its own: ₹94 crore for cotton and ₹82 crore for paddy [5].

• Why this matters for the 2026 announcement

• Before 2016, States could approach the Centre for drought relief without any category test, under the old Calamity Relief Fund [5].
• The 2016 Manual added the test. That is the real thing to watch now — not the declaration, but which grade the Centre accepts.

10. The Rain Did Not Fail This Year — the Gaps Between Rains Did

• Maharashtra's 2026 problem is timing, not the season total
• Between 1 July and 19 September 2026, Maharashtra saw dry spells of two to three weeks at a stretch; in the first 19 days of September alone, the dry spell ran about two weeks [7].

• The Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre briefing of 21 September 2026 says the damage came from long gaps between rainfall events, not from low total rainfall [7].

• This is exactly what a rainfall-first rule can miss

• Rainfall is the compulsory trigger in the Manual [5]. A district can end the season near its normal total and still lose a crop, because the plant died during a three-week gap at flowering time.

• The signs of that damage show up in the other indicators: Maharashtra's vegetation indices were below both last year and the 2021-25 average between 29 August and 13 September 2026, and soil moisture in parts of the State was below the 10-year average [7].

• What an aspirant should take from this

• The lightning photo over Mumbai next to a dry-spell report [1] is not a contradiction. Heavy local storms and a crop-killing dry spell can sit in the same month, in the same State.

11. The Supreme Court Already Ordered a Fix in Swaraj Abhiyan

• The case
• In 2016, in the Swaraj Abhiyan petition, a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and N V Ramana heard a plea about drought in nine States, including Maharashtra [6].

• The Court's opening line was: "The problem is not lack of resources or capability, but the lack of will" [6].

• What the Court actually directed

• Revise the Drought Management Manual, giving weight to all four indicators — rainfall, reservoir storage, surface and ground water, and sowing and crop condition — with fixed determinants [6].
• Fix a time limit for declaring a drought [6]. Today the delay between crop loss and declaration is itself the harm.

• Cut down the room a State has to refuse to declare a drought, and standardise the words and the method used [6].

• The irony worth quoting in an answer

• The 2016 Manual was written to obey this judgment. It standardised the method, as ordered — but the same standardisation is what now blocks States from central funds [5][6].

12. The Case for Strict Rules, and Where That Case Breaks

• The honest argument for the Centre's side
• Before 2016 there was no category test at all, so any State could ask the Centre for relief in any drought year [5]. Declaring drought is politically rewarding — it brings money, tax relief and sympathy.
• NDRF is 100% central money [2]. Without an objective test, the Centre is paying an open-ended bill decided by State politics. Fixed indicators and satellite data are harder to bend than a district officer's report.

• The Supreme Court itself asked for exactly this kind of standard method [6]. So the Manual is not a betrayal of the judgment; it is one reading of it.

• Where the argument fails

• The Court asked for two things — a standard method and less room for a State to refuse relief [6]. The Manual delivered the first and quietly reversed the second: now it is the Centre that gets the room to refuse.
• A test is only fair if a genuinely suffering district can pass it. Maharashtra's 14,679 villages failing in 2017-18 [5] is not proof of honest filtering; it is a signal the threshold sits above the real world.
• A distress cost does not disappear when the Centre refuses it. It moves to the State budget — ₹176 crore in Chandrapur alone [5]. That is cost-shifting, not cost-saving.

13. Fixes That Someone Specific Can Carry Out

• Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare: count a long dry spell as a trigger, not just seasonal rainfall
• The Manual makes rainfall the compulsory indicator [5], but Maharashtra's 2026 loss came from gaps between rains, not a low total [7].

• The fix is to add the length of the dry spell during the crop's growing stage to the compulsory list, so a two-to-three week gap at flowering counts on its own.

• Ministry of Agriculture: lower the "severe" bar from three impact indicators to two

• Today three of four impact indicators must be severe together, which experts say almost never happens [5].

• Two would still be an objective test — it would still reject a State asking for money on politics alone — but it would let a district like Yavatmal, with a -49% August rainfall shortfall and halved rabi sowing, actually qualify [5].

• The Centre should fix the time limit the Supreme Court asked for

• The Court directed that a time limit for declaring drought be written into the Manual [6]. It still needs to bind both sides: a deadline for the State to declare, and a deadline for the Centre to decide on the memorandum.

• Relief under SDRF norms runs only 30 days, extendable to 60, and 90 in severe drought [2]. If the decision itself takes two months, the relief window is spent on paperwork.

• Maharashtra: reconcile paisewari with the Manual before the memorandum is sent

• The State's own paisewari count and the Centre's grading gave opposite answers in 2017-18 [5].
• The State should submit its claim using the Manual's own five indicators, with the satellite and soil-moisture evidence already published for 2026 [7], rather than only the village-level yield figures the Centre does not accept.

14. Anchors for Answers

• Data: 14,679 Maharashtra villages met the State's paisewari drought test in 2017-18; none qualified for central assistance under the 2016 Manual [5]
• Data: Yavatmal rainfall shortfall of -44% (July), -49% (August), -34% (September); rabi area fell from 0.22 to 0.11 million hectares [5]
• Data: Maharashtra saw dry spells of two to three weeks between 1 July and 19 September 2026; vegetation indices below both last year and the 2021-25 average [7]
• Report/Committee: Manual for Drought Management, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, 2016 — five indicator categories; NDRF only for "severe" drought [5]; Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre briefing, 21 September 2026 [7]
• Law/Case: Disaster Management Act, 2005 — NDRF under Section 46, SDRF under Section 48(1)(a) [2][3]; Swaraj Abhiyan v. Union of India (2016) — Supreme Court directed revision of the Drought Management Manual, a time limit for declaration, and less State discretion to refuse [6]
• Scheme: SDRF relief window of 30/60/90 days with a 25% cap on extension spending [2] — the reason delay in grading destroys the relief itself
• Quote: "The problem is not lack of resources or capability, but the lack of will" — Supreme Court, Swaraj Abhiyan [6]

15. Mains Relevance

• GS-III: Disaster and disaster management; agriculture (effects of irrigation, farm support, crop losses).
• GS-II: Centre-State relations, and the federal division of responsibility for relief.
• GS-I: Geography (monsoon variability).
• Plausible question stems:
• Examine the institutional and fiscal framework for drought relief under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. How effective is the SDRF-NDRF architecture?
• Recurrent dry spells in Maharashtra expose structural vulnerabilities in rain-fed agriculture. Discuss with policy remedies.
• Critically evaluate the process of declaring drought and its federal dimensions.

16. Related Topics to Study Next

• Disaster Management Act, 2005 (NDMA/SDMA): institutional basis of the funds.
• Finance Commission and disaster funds: how SDRF/NDRF allocations are set.
• Crop insurance (PMFBY): risk transfer for crop loss.
• Monsoon variability / IMD forecasting: drivers of dry spells.
• Rain-fed agriculture and watershed management: long-term drought-proofing.
• Water governance in Maharashtra: irrigation and cooperative sector links.
• Minimum Support Price and rural distress: income-side effects.

17. Common Errors / Trap Areas

• Section numbers: NDRF is Section 46 and SDRF is Section 48(1)(a). Do not swap them. [2]
• Ratios: 75:25 is the general SDRF ratio and 90:10 applies only to NE and Himalayan States. NDRF is 100% central. [2]
• Duration: 30/60/90 days, with the 25% cap on extensions. [2]
• Declaration: a minister's "100% drought" is not a statutory term. Do not treat it as a formal classification. [1]
• Source caveat: the article text retrieved is a caption only. Do not attribute details beyond it.