Dhurjati Mukherjee
The government’s recently launched Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayaa Yojana (PMKSY) for providing irrigation facilities to every village by creating the much-needed infrastructure is definitely a step in the right direction. However, the project appears too ambitious. It has been decided that Rs 50,000 crore would be provided by the Centre in the next five years to expand irrigation and also set up a first-of-its-kind online agricultural market to help farmers get better prices.
At present, around 50 per cent of the total 142 million hectares of cultivable land in the country is still not covered by irrigation, leaving a majority of farmers dependent on the monsoon. The new scheme aims to ensure access to protective irrigation. It would guarantee that state and district irrigation plans are prepared on the basis of prevailing agro-climatic conditions and sources of availability of water in the region.
Under PMKSY, states will get 75 per cent central grant while for the north eastern states the figure would go up to 90 per cent. The government had earmarked Rs 1,000 crore for the scheme in the budget but it is understood that `5,300 crore would be spent this fiscal. This is expected to bring an additional 6 lakh hectares under irrigation, while five lakh hectares will benefit from drip irrigation. Additionally, 1,300 watershed projects have been marked for completion.
Experts are of the opinion that achievement of the target may not become a reality even in the next decade or so, as it is practically impossible to accomplish this task because of various factors, the most important being the availability of water. Though the project has clearly demonstrated the government’s eagerness to help the farming community, the present situation of acute water scarcity in certain parts of the country may make accomplishing the target rather difficult.
As is well known, agriculture accounts for about 15 per cent of India’s economy and over 70 per cent of the population depends on farming for a livelihood. While there is high potential of agriculture and agro-based products for the country, at this juncture it is imperative to increase production and productivity, especially in regions where yields are quite low. This may only be achieved through irrigation, which the government now plans and claims to spread across the country.
However, various studies have revealed that groundwater levels have been declining in various parts of the country, primarily across northern India, and the country may become a water-stressed country within the next three to four years. Scientists at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) and their collaborating agencies — including the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad — found that the terrestrial water storage (TWS), a measure of surface and underground water, decreased by 1 cm per annum between 2003 and 2012. The new results are important because they indicate a loss of TWS even in the absence of any significant changes in either rainfall patterns of river water discharges.
According to the study of NCMRWF, the decrease in water stored in lakes, reservoirs, rivers along with groundwater is definitely a cause of worry as this may affect everything from power to agriculture. The researchers used a pair of US-German satellites named GRACE (Gravity Recovery & Climate Experience) that track subtle changes in earth’s gravity on each other to estimate changes in surface and groundwater on the planet.
Scientists at NASA space agency used GRACE to estimate that the country’s north western granary states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan had lost substantial amount of groundwater by an average of 100 cm every three years. India’s National Remote Sensing Agency too found that groundwater levels in the Indo-Gangetic plain had been declining by about 3 mm per month between 2005 and 2010.
Experts are of the opinion that by the year 2020 or even earlier there would be a genuine water crisis in many regions of the country. Even now, the Cauvery, Pennar, Sabarmati are some of the basins of the country with scarcity conditions. It may be mentioned here that while water availability of less than 1,000 m per capita is considered by international agencies as scarcity condition, in majority of the river basins, the present utilisation is quite high and in the range of 50-95 per cent of utilisable surface resources.
In this connection, one may mention that the plan of linking the rivers across the country, specially the Manas-Sankosh-Teesta-Ganga link in Assam. Bengal and Bihar would not only provide large irrigation benefits to the three states but also make available large quantities of surplus water for transfer to the southern states. This would be the fifth interlink project while the first one — Ken-Betwa link — is expected to begin this year. If these projects are properly monitored, the irrigation potential of the country would hopefully steadily rise.
Delving into statistics, investment in irrigation grew from 7.5 per cent in 2004-05 to only 7.7 per cent in 2013-14. Within this, the share of the government actually declined from 6.7 per cent to 4.7 per cent while the private sector share increased from 7.8 to 8.6 per cent. Between 2004 and 2014, the central government provided more than `53,000 crore to the states for irrigation projects, according to a reply in Parliament (April this year). But, out of 297 projects, 163 were running much behind schedule, including some for over 20 years.
Thus it is quite obvious that apart from lack of water availability, inefficiency in handling irrigation projects and lack of financial resources have affected the much-needed spread of irrigation facilities in the country. Importantly, the sheer lack of water has prompted agricultural scientists to experiment with cultivation of crops that require less water, which is called dryland farming. There has been some success on this front though the need for irrigation cannot be doubted for two to three yields per annum.
It goes without saying that with the launch of the new scheme, it is also necessary to bring about more efficiency in completion of projects so that food grains output could be boosted. Moreover, a deficient monsoon should not affect foodgrain production and agricultural productivity. If the scheme is even partly successful, it would be a big boost to the agricultural sector to offset the need for more foodgrain with an ever expanding population in the coming years.
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