Farmers in India are struggling through an uncooperative monsoon season this year. Photo: Animesh Singh (flickr)

It's now halfway through India's rainy season, which typically lasts about four months. But this year's monsoon has been uncharacteristically late and erratic. After the driest June since 1926 and a dryer-than-average July, economists and policy makers are worried that the country's economic rebound from the global recession could soon come under threat.

According to The Canadian Press, from 2003 - 2008 India averaged 8.8 percent annual growth. The global recession was estimated to slow India's growth to 6.8 percent this year, according to Citigroup, but the faltering monsoon could now bring that number down to as low as 5.2 percent.

The summer monsoon season is critical for India's agricultural output, which relies heavily on rainfall due to poor irrigation infrastructure. With rainfall staggeringly weak in some places and disastrously intense in others, millions of people have been left increasingly worried about the future.

"I've sown only a third of wheat that I usually sow each year because there's no water... we are badly hurt," Mohan Singh, a farmer from Punjab state, told the Wall Street Journal.

Two-thirds of India's 1.1 billion people live in rural settings, which account for more than half of the country's domestic consumption. Many of these people make their living agriculturally. Any decline in their wages due to a weak harvest could significantly hurt demand for commodities across the board, which could slow India's economic recovery from the global recession.

Another potentially worrisome effect of the weak monsoon and insufficient crop yield is high food price inflation, which experts say could widen the gap between weak and poor.

"Without a significant redistribution of resources, the wealth gap between urban and rural regions will widen, potentially leading to social tension," Sherman Chan, an economist with Moody's Economy.com, told The Canadian Press regarding India's current agricultural system, which lacks proper irrigation, infrastructure, and modern farming technology.