Irrigating India
(Water policy on the Subcontinent) (944)
International Water Management Institute
"How does the water come down at Lodore?"
Robert Southey
British poet
"The Cataract of Lodore," 1820
India has a long history of artificial irrigation. The traditional Indian agricultural practice had emphasized small-scale, community-managed irrigation projects. However, when the East India Company began governing India in the 1800s, it introduced large-scale, basinwide irrigation - an irrigation technique intended to conduct revenue-driven agriculture and counter the effects of drought. This foreign irrigation technique set the course for irrigation practices on the Indian subcontinent for the next 200 years.
Rise of Groundwater Use
In the past 40 years, however, groundwater has emerged as the primary source for irrigation.
As the infrastructure and management of large-scale irrigation programs deteriorated, farmers began extracting groundwater, which has become the mainstay of agriculture in 85 percent of India's farming areas outside large canal commands. Many farmers are growing a wider range of crops than the staples of rice and wheat and require a water supply that is more flexible than supply-driven programs. However, with millions of farmers sucking water from tube wells whenever they choose, groundwater supplies are dwindling.
By 2000, Indian institutions had gathered considerable data related to irrigation, but they knew little about how to use the information to influence policy. A team of about 30 social scientists and management graduates started looking for ways to integrate centrally managed irrigation systems with the trend toward intensive groundwater use.
The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has helped Indian policymakers learn lessons from efforts to overhaul irrigation projects in China, Mexico and Africa. It also brought the topic of groundwater use in India to the forefront of the irrigation debate.
"Until 2000 most Indian discussions on irrigation were centered on large-scale irrigation projects and surface water in irrigation," said Tushaar Shah, a senior fellow at IWMI India. "There was little in the literature about the increasingly important role that groundwater is playing and how this resource might be managed."
Current efforts focus on addressing groundwater depletion by refilling aquifers with rainwater that would otherwise run off and be wasted. In 2006, IWMI recommended a program of refilling groundwater across the 65 percent of India that has hard-rock aquifers, and it was incorporated in India's 2008 budget.
From Research to Reality
One challenge is restoring and maintaining the rainwater supply in areas with hard-rock aquifers. These geological formations can store less rainwater than areas with porous sand or clay rocks. The Indian government has allocated $400 million (USD) to fund dug-well recharge projects in areas where hard-rock aquifers have been overused. A dug-well is a wide, shallow well, often lined with concrete. The money will pay for 7 million dug-well structures to divert monsoon runoff.
Each includes a desiltation chamber, plus pipes to collect surplus rainwater and divert desilted water from the chamber to the well. Small and midsize farms receive 100 percent of equipment costs in subsidies; others receive 50 percent. So far, the states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat have begun using this funding for groundwater recharge programs.
Gujarat is finalizing its managed aquifer recharge plan. The state's 191 dams contain more than 20,000 million cubic meters (MCM) of water but suffer high losses from evaporation in dams and open canals. An additional 17,600 MCM are available but wasted through runoff. The plan aims to store 11,000 MCM in the proposed Kalpasar Lake in the Gulf of Khambhat, while the remaining 5,600 MCM will be diverted underground as part of the recharge program. Gujarat will use the funding to install 21,200 percolation tanks (used to impound runoff water), 22,400 recharge wells (enabling water to be pumped into an aquifer) and 23,600 check dams (small dams that store runoff and recharge aquifers).
Gujarat: A Leading Example
Sometimes sound water policy clashes with established interests. This was the case in Gujarat after the state introduced electricity subsidies to farmers around 1970. The subsidies enabled farmers to easily pump groundwater from ever-increasing depths, and the state eventually faced the dual problem of bankrupt electricity utilities and depleted groundwater storage.
The Asian Development Bank and World Bank suggested that governments cut the electricity subsidies and charge farmers based on metered consumption of power. However, when some states tried to do so, farmers formed powerful lobbies and several chief ministers lost their seats. A different solution was required.
IWMI proposed that governments introduce "intelligent rationing" of farm power by separating the cables carrying electricity to farmers from those supplying other rural users, such as domestic households and industries. They should then provide farmers with high-quality power for a specified number of hours each day at a price they could afford.
Eventually Gujarat adopted these recommendations in a larger program to reform the electricity utility. After the cables were separated, rural households, schools and industries had a much higher-quality power supply, which boosted well-being.
IWMI also works with policy managers in the Indus-Gangetic and Yellow River basins to analyze groundwater issues from physical, socio-economic, governance and policy perspectives. The work helps decisionmakers think about using groundwater productively and sustainably and craft effective groundwater management policies.
The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) is a nonprofit scientific organization and one of 15 research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). IWMI's mission is "improving the management of land and water resources for food, livelihoods and the environment." During the past decade, IWMI has helped put groundwater on the political agenda in India and has influenced initiatives to recharge dwindling aquifers at the national level
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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