Issues and Challenges in Irrigation

The major issues and challenges in irrigation sector in India are as follows.

• Rainfall and Water availability in India has huge Regional Imbalance
• We suffer from Sub-optimal utilization of created facilities
• India’s Irrigation Efficiency is very poor
• We have a faulty Groundwater Policy
• Competing demand for water is increasing rapidly
• Overexploitation of surface water leading to drainage problems
• Water Resources Face challenges from Climate Change

Each of these issues are given brief background here:

Rainfall and Water availability in India has huge Regional Imbalance

There is a huge temporal and spatial variation in rainfall and water availability in the country. While average annual rainfall is 1170mm, some parts of north east get around 10000 mm per year, while parts of western Rajasthan get only 100 mm. The below graphics shows that that around 68% of total net sown area fall under either lower or low rainfall.

Similarly, the basin wise availability of water is also quite varied—the Ganga- Brahmaputra river basin contributes more than 50 per cent of the total annual water availability, and the Southern and Western basins contribute about 15 per cent each.

We suffer from Sub-optimal utilization of created facilities

Despite of so many decades passed, the efforts to tap the irrigation potential, the gap between the potential tapped and the potential possible is not only large, but widening. The major causes for these gaps are poor maintenance of the canal system, lack of participatory management, changing land use pattern, deviation from the designated cropping pattern, soil degradation and delay in the development of the command area. Whereas the potential created for irrigation is 112 million ha, the gross irrigated area is merely 93 million ha—the gap of 19 million ha is staggering.

India’s Irrigation Efficiency is very poor

As per the Report of the Task Force on Irrigation (2009) constituted by the then Planning Commission, for a gross irrigated area of about 91 mha, the water use is 634 BCM, which gives a delta of 0.68 m per ha of gross irrigated area. The average annual rainfall is 1170 mm (1.17m). Taking 70 per cent of the rainfall as effective for crop consumptive use, the gross water use is about 1.45 m (4.8 feet) per ha of the gross irrigated area. This is very high compared to water use in irrigation systems in developed countries, such as the USA, where water allocation is about 90 cm. This overuse in the country reflects low irrigation efficiency, of about 25 per cent to 35 per cent in most irrigation systems, with efficiency of 40 per cent to 45 per cent in a few exceptional cases.

We have a faulty Groundwater Policy

Groundwater has rapidly emerged to occupy a dominant place in India’s agriculture and food security. It has become the main source of growth in irrigated area, and it now accounts for over 60 per cent of the irrigated area. About 70 per cent of the paddy and wheat production in the country is from irrigated areas. Heavy subsidies in electricity consumed for agriculture have tended to encourage wasteful use of energy and water.

This has also encouraged farmers to overdraw water from deep aquifers, causing substantial depletion of the water table and deterioration of water quality in many cases. There has been unprecedented crop diversification, due to unregulated groundwater development.

The preference for water-intensive crops like rice, sugarcane, banana, cotton, etc., is high in regions known only for groundwater availability. It is to be clearly understood that despite huge groundwater potential for agricultural growth, the country is heading towards an irrigation crisis.

Competing demand for water is increasing rapidly

The demand for water for various purposes is increasing due to population growth, urbanization and industrialization. Presently, the agriculture sector is using about 83 per cent of available water resources, but demand from other sectors may reduce availability for agricultural use to 68 per cent by 2050.

Overexploitation of surface water leading to drainage problems

Overuse of surface water leads to drainage problems, which in turn leads to Waterlogging in some areas. Waterlogging, however, is mostly associated with unlined or poorly maintained canal irrigation systems.

Water Resources Face challenges from Climate Change

Although a precise quantitative assessment of the impact of climate change on water resources is yet to be made, various reports indicate that climate change could result in further intensification of temporal and spatial variation in the availability of water and extreme events of flood and drought. Temperature drives the hydrologic cycle, and influences hydrological processes in a direct or indirect way.

A warmer climate may lead to intensification of the hydrological cycle, resulting in higher rates of evaporation and increase of liquid precipitation. What is more detrimental could be the phased changes in the hydrological cycle, affecting spatial and temporal distribution of runoff, soil moisture, groundwater reserves, etc. It may increase the frequency of floods and droughts. With the rise in sea levels, it can have a distinct effect on estuarine ecology, thereby affecting river behaviour in myriad ways, in addition to hydrological changes.

Altogether, it can have a signal influence, both hydrologically and ecologically, on river basins as a whole. Its impact is further compounded by surging population, increasing industrialization and associated demands on freshwater.