CRITICAL APPRAISSAL OF METEOROLOGICAL DROUGHT INDICES: A CASE STUDY ON THE ANANTHAPUR DISTRICT.

Drought is one of the major threat to the sustainable development of India. The Ananthapur district is particularly vulnerable to droughts and there is need to take up the drought mitigation measures. The first phase in the development of drought mitigation measures is the drought assessment. Drought assessment is carried out by drought indices and it was found that drought indices are developed regionally and no drought index is superior to other in characterising drought. This research work illustrates the complexity of drought assessment and holistic approach of evaluating drought indices. In the case of this research drought assessment is carried out using meteorological drought indices and evaluated using decision criteria to find the suitability of existing drought indices to case study area. Risk analysis was also carried out to find out the drought risk in the case study area.This study reveals that 1) Percentage of departure along with Percent of normal are most suitable drought indices in characterising drought in study area. 2) Standardised precipitation index and Reconnaissance drought index are least suitable and shows high temperamental characteristic in nature. 3) Risk analysis reveals that the chance of occurrence of mild drought in the study area is 99% and return period is 2.6 years. 4) It is essential to utilize the percentage of departure along with percent of normal for development of drought policy.