Irrigation

Since independence, there has been a rapid expansion of irrigation infrastructure. Despite the large-scale expansion, only about one third of total cropped area is irrigated today (two third of cropped areas is still dependent upon monsoon). Agriculture in India even today continues to be vulnerable to the vagaries of weather because close to 52% (73.2 million hectares area of 141.4 million hectares net sown area) of it is still un-irrigated and rain-fed.

Recent Developments

Accelerated Irrigated Benefits Programme Starts Showing Results

The Government had, in 2016, embarked on a mission to complete all unfinished major and medium irrigation projects – some of these languishing for decades – under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP). Two years on – the mission was announced in the Union Budget presented on February 29, 2016 – the progress has been quite impressive, going by the information made available by the Ministry of Water Resources.

Irrigation Status

  • Out of the total 105 projects targeted for completion before December 2019, work in as many as 41 is either over or at least 90 per cent finished.
  • The 41 include all the 18 ‘Priority I’ projects that were supposed to have been completed by the end of 2017. There are another 32 projects, categorised under ‘Priority II’, which are to be completed soon. The remaining 55 ‘Priority III’ projects have a deadline of December, 2019.
  • The Ministry’s data shows that in 16 projects – including nine in the ‘Priority II’ and seven in the ‘Priority III’ lists – between 80 and 90 per cent of work has been completed. Further, in 57 out of the total 105 projects, there has been minimum 80 per cent work completion.
  • The 105 projects together are expected to bring an additional 6.7 million hectares (mh) of cultivable land under irrigation.

Long-Term Irrigation Fund (LTIF)

  • Realising that the monies required for these projects could not be raised solely through budgetary support, the government decided to explore the market borrowings option.
  • The 2016-17 Union Budget announced the creation of a dedicated Long-Term Irrigation Fund (LITF) under the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development or NABARD with an initial corpus of Rs 20,000 crore.
  • It was also proposed to generate Rs 86,500 crore over five years, with the budgetary allocations provided every year primarily going to service these loans for financing irrigation projects. State governments, too, were allowed to access this fund.

More Crop Per Drop

  • The government’s ‘More Crop Per Drop’ initiative has resulted in roughly 8.45 lakh hectares incremental area coming under drip and sprinkler irrigation.
  • This is an umbrella programme of all irrigation schemes, including AIBP, micro-irrigation and watershed development interventions.
  • PM Krishi Sinchayee Yojana ‘Per Drop More Crop’ Micro Irrigation- with an outlay of Rs.50,000 crores for a period of 5 years (2015-16 to 2019-20) is to achieve convergence of investments in irrigation at the field level. The broad objectives of PM Krishi Sichayi Yojana includes
    • Achieve convergence of investments in irrigation at the field level (preparation of district level and, if required, sub district level water use plans).
    • Enhance the physical access of water on the farm and expand cultivable area under assured irrigation (‘Har Khet ko Pani’).
    • Integration of water source, distribution and its efficient use, to make best use of water through appropriate technologies and practices.
    • Improve on - farm water use efficiency to reduce wastage and increase availability both in duration and extent.

Irrigation in India

Impact of Weather on Agriculture Productivity

  • The impact of temperature and rainfall is highly non-linear and felt almost only when temperature increases and rainfall shortfalls are extreme.
  • Extreme climate shocks have highly divergent effects between unirrigated and irrigated areas (and consequently between crops that are dependent on rainfall), almost twice as high in the former compared with the latter.
  • Definition of Unirrigated Areas: Unirrigated areas are defined as districts where less than 50% of cropped area is irrigated.
  • Unirrigated areas bear the brunt of the vagaries of weather. For example, an extreme temperature shock in unirrigated areas reduces yields by 7% for kharif and 7.6% for rabi. Similarly, the effects of extreme rainfall shocks are 14.7% and 8.6% (for kharif and rabi, respectively) in unirrigated areas, much larger than the effects these shocks have in irrigated districts.
  • Crops grown in rainfed areas—pulses in both kharif and rabi—are vulnerable to weather shocks while the cereals—both rice and wheat—are relatively more immune.
  • Extreme temperature shocks reduce farmer incomes by 4.3% and 4.1% during kharif and rabi respectively, whereas extreme rainfall shocks reduce incomes by 13.7% and 5.5%.

How Rise in Temperature Impacts Agriculture: In a year where temperatures are 1-degree Celsius higher farmer incomes would fall by 6.2% during the kharif season and 6% during rabi in unirrigated districts. Similarly, in a year when rainfall levels were 100 millimetres less than average, farmer incomes would fall by 15% during kharif and by 7% during the rabi season.

Irrigation System in India

The monsoonal rainfall in India is concentrated only in four months and more than 50% of the net sown area is rain-fed only. Only 48.3% of land is irrigated throughout the country. Irrigation is thus essential to overcome spatial and temporal variation of rainfall. Irrigation in India is mainly classified into:

  • Well Irrigation
  • Tank Irrigation
  • Canal Irrigation

Related Content