New Delhi, June 13 -- In the past few weeks, among other happenings, including war, fuel price hikes and examination messes, one not-so-small piece of information kept a large portion of this country on tenterhooks-the official arrival of the south-west monsoon on 4 June, three days behind its usual schedule.

This large population of farmers is busy digging into their reserves to prepare their land for the upcoming Kharif season, or the monsoon cropping season when crops are sown at the onset of the south-west monsoon (June-July) and harvested at the end of the monsoon (September-October). Fertilisers are in short supply, bank loans have become harder, and finding fuel for tractors is an uphill task-all a fallout of the war between Iran ...