The spatio-temporal study of long term agricultural drought for monsoon dependent countries like India is very essential in order to develop various strategies to improve the agricultural productivity in the country. In the present study, an attempt has been made to assess the long term agricultural drought for period of 20 years from 1984 to 2003 for the state of Tamil Nadu, India using one of the popular NDVI based index called vegetation condition index (VCI). The Normalized differenced vegetation index (NDVI) from Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) has been used in the present study to compute the VCI for every fortnight during the crop growing period of June to September. The results showed that the state is experiencing moderate to severe drought situation during most of the years in the analysis period of 1984 to 2003. The recurrent drought in the state necessitates the government to take suitable preventive measures to avoid drought in future. The agricultural drought intensity maps prepared using VCI will help the state government authorities to identify the drought risk areas and prioritize their actions based on the severity of the drought level. © IAEME Publication.