Water Management - Agriculture | GS II

What is the issue?

A one-week delay in Indian monsoon has showed the extent of water crisis in the country in recent days.
The events call for a better water management policy in India, especially in terms of agriculture.

How is India’s water use?

India has only 4% of global freshwater resources.
But, it has to address the needs of about 18% of global population.
As per Central Water Commission, 78% of the total freshwater resources available in the country was being used for irrigation in 2010.
This is likely to be reduced to 68% by 2050.
For domestic use, it was just 6% in 2010, and is likely to go up to 9.5% by 2050.
So, by far, agriculture will remain the biggest user of water to produce enough food, feed and fibre in the foreseeable future.
Therefore, improving water supplies and efficiency in water use in this sector is essential to improve the overall situation on water.

How unregulated is groundwater use?

Share - Of the total of about 198 million hectares of India’s gross cropped area, roughly half is irrigated.
The major source of this irrigation is groundwater (63%); canals account for 24%, tanks 2%, and all other sources about 11%.
So, groundwater bears the real burden of irrigating Indian agriculture, driven by private investments from farmers.
Policy - The policy of cheap or free power supplies for irrigation has led to an almost anarchic situation in the use of groundwater.
Power subsidies to agriculture cost the exchequer roughly Rs. 70,000 crores each year.
Eventually, this leads to unregulated depletion of groundwater.
Concerns - Overall, about 1,592 blocks in 256 districts are either critical or overexploited in this regard.
In places like Punjab, water table has been going down by almost a metre a year for almost two decades.
Almost 80% of the blocks in Punjab are overexploited or critical.

What role does crop choice play?

Paddy and sugarcane, both water-guzzling crops, take away almost 60% of India’s irrigation water.
One kilo of rice produced in Punjab requires almost 5,000 litres of water for irrigation.
One kilo of sugar in, say Maharashtra, requires about 2,300 litres of water.
Estimates vary on how much water the plant really consumes, how much evaporates, and how much percolates back into groundwater.
But traditionally, say a hundred years back, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar used to be the sugarcane hub.
On the other hand, rice was grown largely in eastern and southern India, where rainfall was high and water plentiful.
All that has changed now with new technology and populist policies like free power.

What is the way forward?

Political will - No political party wants to touch rationalisation of power pricing for agriculture.
Technological solutions, like drip, sprinklers, etc, cannot make much progress either due to policy shortfalls.
Israel has perhaps the best water technologies and management systems.
Ranging from drips to desalinisation to recycling (87%) of urban waste water, Israel has much for agriculture.
But implementing these on ground in India needs much political will.
Pricing - For the above technologies to make its potential progress, pricing has to be regulated.
One way out is to give farmers monetary rewards for saving water and power.
Crops - There could be income support on per hectare basis (say, Rs. 15,000/ha) for less water-guzzling crops.
E.g. maize or soyabean in Punjab during kharif season
This would save power subsidy and, more importantly, precious groundwater.
At least one million hectares of paddy cultivation needs to shift away from the Punjab-Haryana belt to eastern India.
Eastern India can develop better procurement facilities for PDS system for paddy.
Procurement from Punjab-Haryana needs to be discouraged/curtailed.
Similarly, sugarcane needs to be contained in Maharashtra and Karnataka belt and expanded in UP/Bihar belt.
With new Co238 varieties that give recovery rates of more than 10.5%, sugarcane can be developed for ethanol from this belt.

Source: Financial Express

Water Management - Agriculture