NEW DELHI: The weather office predicted that the southwest monsoon will be below normal for the second year in a row in 2015 and indicated that the disruptive El Niño phenomenon could make things worse for India’s largely rain-fed farms, raising the spectre of accelerating inflation.“Monsoon rainfall is likely to be 93% of the long period average for the period June to September,” Earth Sciences Minister Harsh Vardhan said after releasing the forecast of the India Meteorological Department on Wednesday.He said the probability of a below-normal monsoon was the highest at 35%, while it was 33% for a deficient monsoon, 28% for a normal monsoon and ‘negligible’ for an above-normal monsoon. When rainfall is 90-95% of the long period average, it is considered below normal and when it is less than 90% of the average it is said to be deficient.“There is no reason for alarm or panic on below-normal monsoon forecast. We are alerting the states to prepare for the below-normal monsoon rains,” the minister said.The northwestern and central parts of the country could receive less rain than peninsular India, according to Shailesh Nayak, secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences India’s weather office defines normal rainfall as between 96% and 104% of the 50-year average of 89 cm for the entire four-month season. Last year, the monsoon was 12% below normal, the worst in five years, reducing the area under crop plantation and depleting reservoirs, which lowered the summer harvest and affected winter planting.The met department did not provide region-wise rain forecasts. The next forecast on May 15 will be on the onset of the monsoon, which is traditionally in the first week of June, after which it will update its outlook.Skymet, a New Delhi-based private weather forecasting agency that had predicted a normal monsoon this year, said it will review its estimates if there are major changes in parameters. Skymet had said rainfall would be 102% of the average for the country, with a 5% margin of error. The forecaster had said there was a 16% chance of below-normal rainfall in 2015. IMD meteorologists said the El Niño was likely to persist during the 2015 monsoon season. While the IMD didn’t formally state the chances of the El Niño developing, D Sivananda Pai , head of long-range forecasting, maintained his outlook made last week that there was a 50% possibility of the phenomenon forming this year.International forecasters have been almost unanimous in predicting that the El Niño, caused by the warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean, is likely to disrupt global rainfall patterns, which can parch parts of Asia and Australia and trigger storms and floods in other regions.The country’s worst drought in 37 years took place in 2009, an El Niño year. Food prices shot up 20%, leading to persistently high inflation for years. Agriculture accounts for 14% of India’s economy and more than half the country’s population depends on farms directly or indirectly.The El Niño is an oceanic phenomenon that emerges every three to seven years, leading to warm water temperatures around the Pacific coast of South America. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the US Climate Prediction Centre have said that 2015 will be an El Niño year.El Niño has a history of adversely impacting monsoon rain. In the past decade, 2002, 2004 and 2009 were drought years in India due to the phenomenon.