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Some aspects of South Asia's groundwater irrigation economy: analyses from a survey in India, Pakistan, Nepal Terai and Bangladesh

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Abstract

Since 1960, South Asia has emerged as the largest user of groundwater in irrigation in the world. Yet, little is known about this burgeoning economy, now the mainstay of the region's agriculture, food security and livelihoods. Results from the first socio-economic survey of its kind, involving 2,629 well-owners from 278 villages from India, Pakistan, Nepal Terai and Bangladesh, show that groundwater is used in over 75% of the irrigated areas in the sample villages, far more than secondary estimates suggest. Thanks to the pervasive use of groundwater in irrigation, rain-fed farming regions are a rarity although rain-fed plots within villages abound. Groundwater irrigation is quintessentially supplemental and used mostly on water-economical inferior cereals and pulses, while a water-intensive wheat and rice system dominates canal areas. Subsidies on electricity and canal irrigation shape the sub-continental irrigation economy, but it is the diesel pump that drives it. Pervasive markets in tubewell irrigation services enhance irrigation access to the poor. Most farmers interviewed reported resource depletion and deterioration, but expressed more concern over the high cost and poor reliability of energy supply for groundwater irrigation, which has become the fulcrum of their survival strategy.

Résumé

Depuis 1960, l’Asie du Sud a émergée en tant que plus grand utilisateur d’eaux souterraines pour l’irrigation dans le monde. Par ailleurs, on connaît peu de choses sur l’économie bourgeonnante, le maintien actuel de l’agriculture de la région, la sécurité alimentaire et les moyens d’existence. Les résultats de différentes études socio-économiques, sur 2,629 propriétaires de puits de 278 villages d’Inde, Pakistan, Népal et Bangladesh, montrent que l’eau souterraine est utilisée sur 75 % des aires irriguées dans les villages échantillonnés, loin de ce que les estimations suggérèrent. Du fait de l’utilisation envahissante de l’eau souterraine pour l’irrigation, les régions utilisant l’eau de pluie sont rares, bien que les villages alimentés par eau de pluie abondent.

L’irrigation avec l’eau souterraine est d’une manière quintessence complémentaire, utilisée le plus souvent pour les céréales inférieures et les légumes secs, alors que l’utilisation intensive de l’eau pour le blé et le riz domine les aires de canaux. Les subsides pour l’électricité et l’irrigation par canal, forme l’économie sub-continentale de l’irrigation, mais ce sont les pompes diesel qui la conduise. Les marchés envahissants des services de forages pour l’irrigation, améliorent l’accès de l’irrigation pour les pauvres. La plus part des fermiers interviewés ont reporté un épuisement et une détérioration de la ressource, mais sont surtout concernés par le coût et la faible rentabilité énergétique de l’eau souterraine pour l’irrigation, qui est devenue le point d’appui de leur stratégie de survie.

Resumen

Desde 1960 el Sur de Asia ha emergido como el usuario más grande del mundo de agua subterránea para riego. Sin embargo, se conoce poco acerca de esta creciente economía, que constituye ahora el pilar de agricultura de la región, la seguridad alimentaria y la subsistencia. Los resultados del primer levantamiento socioeconómico de este tipo, que involucra 2,629 propietarios de pozos de 278 poblados de India, Pakistán, Nepal teria y Bangladesh, muestra que el agua subterránea es usada en más de 75% de las áreas irrigadas en los poblados muestreados, mucho más que lo sugerido por estimaciones secundarias.

Debido a el amplio uso de agua subterránea en riego, las regiones agrícolas abastecidas por agua de lluvia son raras aunque abundan poblados con parcelas alimentadas por lluvia. El riego por agua subterránea es quintaesencialmente suplemental, utilizado principalmente en cereales inferiores económicos en agua mientras que el trigo de uso intensivo de agua y el sistema de arroz predominan en áreas de canales. Los subsidios en electricidad y riego de canales moldean la economía de riego sub-continental, pero es la bomba de diesel la que la mueve. Los amplios mercados en servicios de riego de pozos entubados estimulan el acceso al riego para los pobres. La mayoría de agricultores entrevistados reportan un deterioro y escasez del recurso pero expresaron más preocupación por el alto costo y dependencia de los pobres en el abastecimiento de energía para regar con agua subterránea, lo cual se ha convertido en el punto de apoyo de su estrategia para sobrevivir.

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Notes

  1. 292 villages were covered by the original sample; however, complete data sets are available only for 278 villages.

  2. There were some parts of some zones–Balochistan and Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir, and hill areas of Nepal–which were not covered by the survey for a variety of reasons. These were excluded from the analysis.

  3. In hindsight this question may have been interpreted differently by different farmers and may have evoked different responses. The two most likely interpretations are: (1) When did you first acquire the well/tubewell in use now? (2) When did you first establish a mechanized well/tubewell. Under the circumstances, the best interpretation of Fig. 3 pertains to establishing the year during in which the respondent first acquired a mechanized well/tubewell.

  4. Open or tubewells mounted with either diesel or electric pumps.

  5. A variety of estimates are in circulation about the groundwater contribution to India's irrigated area. (NABARD 2005).

  6. The National Sample Survey of 78,990 rural households around India, however, estimates the irrigated areas cultivated with the five major field crops (which account for 93% of the entire cultivated area) to be 66% (NSSO 1999a).

  7. The Minor Irrigation Census (GOI 2001b), which covered all the Indian states except Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, offers a rough reality check; however, this census reports data which is nearly 10-years old. According to this census, in 1993–1994, 38% of the net cultivated area was irrigated. The census computed that major and medium projects accounted for 39.4% of the irrigated areas while groundwater explained 50%; other surface sources accounted for 10.6%. The IWMI-Tata survey (in 2002) suggests that the structure of Indian irrigation is changing rapidly with canal dominated areas shrinking at a worrying pace. Recent large-scale surveys carried out in India by the National Sample Survey Organization lend indirect support to this contention that groundwater has become the mainstay of India's irrigation economy. The NSS 54th Round, which interviewed 78,990 rural households throughout India, estimated that while 61.2% of rural households are cultivators, 36% of all rural households interviewed (i.e., some 60% of cultivators) used irrigation (NSSO 1999a). NSSO (1999b) estimates that, of the irrigating households, some 40% depended on their own wells, another 27.2% relied on purchased pump irrigation, and 32.8% obtained irrigation from public/community surface and groundwater sources such as government canals, tanks, rivers, streams and public tubewells. This suggests that two-thirds of India's irrigation economy is dominated by private wells.

  8. This does not tally with a much larger sample survey carried out by India's National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO 2003) in which 4,646 villages were asked about the kind of irrigation facilities they had. Of these villages, 76.2% reported some kind of irrigation, implying that 23.8% of the villages had no irrigation source whatsoever. Of the villages that reported irrigation facilities, 64.3% reported wells and tubewells as their source of irrigation, 17.3% reported the availability of canals, and 16.7% reported irrigation from streams, tanks and other sources. While this survey suggests the existence of a larger number of rain-fed villages than the smaller IWMI-Tata survey does, it supports the IWMI observation that wells and tubewells are the dominant source of irrigation in Indian villages. Moreover, if one were to expand this sample to cover Bangladesh, Nepal Terai and Pakistan Punjab and Sindh, it is quite likely that the proportion of villages with canal irrigation would fall and those with tubewells as the only source would increase.

  9. That is, the quantity, quality and infrastructure of the electrical supply to agriculture have all progressively deteriorated resulting in farmers replacing electric pumps with diesel pumps.

  10. The region also has much surface water. However, the lower Ganga Basin offers few sites for building large-scale storages. As a result, flood waters of Ganga and its tributaries cause much socio-economic and livelihood loss due to recurrent floods and acute surface-water logging. It has long been recognized that intensive groundwater development in the region may significantly ease flooding by curtailing the rejected recharge during and after a monsoon.

  11. \( {\rm Discharge}\,({\rm m}^3 {\rm /ha)} = \frac{{{\rm HP} \times {\rm hours}/{\rm ha} \times 75 \times {\rm pump\, efficiency}\,(\%)}}{{1,000 \times {\rm head}\,({\rm m})}}.\) where 1,000 is the specific weight of the water. The average energy efficiency of Indian irrigation pump sets is widely recognized to be abysmally low. Patel and Pandey (1996)who rectified 3,600 irrigation pumps in Gujarat noted that “the levels of consumption of electricity or diesel in the farmers’ pump sets are 150–200% of the desired/achievable limits (p. 13)” and can be improved by simple rectification with minimal investments. Also see (Sant and Dixit 1996; Operations Research Group 1991, and TERI, 1996).

  12. The Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada River in western India was one of the largest river-valley projects planned by India after it became independent. The project acquired worldwide notoriety because of opposition to it from environmental groups.

  13. This survey, as mentioned earlier, covered area cultivated with the five major field crops, which together accounted for 93% of the entire cultivated area.

  14. A new paper by Sharma and Sharma (2004) on the functioning of groundwater markets in the arid and semi-arid zones of Rajasthan, however, suggest a different pattern than what the IWMI aggregate picture suggests. In this water scarce region, groundwater markets should have a relatively low breadth and depth. However, this paper shows that 103 of the 137 households interviewed in the semi-arid Alwar and Jaipur districts participated as water buyers and/or sellers; and 115 out of 143 interviewed in arid Jodhpur and Nagaur districts participated as buyers and/or sellers. These statistics suggest participation rates comparable to Bangladesh’s. The Sharma and Sharma study also shows that in Rajasthan, where aquifers are deep and tubewells quite large, the modal seller is typically the large farmer, whereas over 90% of the buyers are small farmers with less than 2 ha of arable land.

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Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was carried out under the IWMI-Tata Water Policy program funded by the International Water Management Institute, Colombo and Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai. The data analysed in this paper were collected by several partners who worked with IWMI researchers, as listed in Appendix 1, and our thanks go out to them. The authors also gratefully acknowledge comments on earlier drafts of this paper from Jacob Burke, Mark Giordano, Ramon Llamas, Hugh Turral and particularly, from Karen Villhoth who read several drafts and commented extensively on substantive and editorial aspects. The authors would also like to thank P. Reghu without whose help this work would not have become possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Water Management Institute, IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program, Elecon, Anand-Sojitra Road, Vallabh Vidyanagar, 388 120, Gujarat, India

    Tushaar Shah & O. P. Singh

  2. Department of Geography, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 ODG, UK

    Aditi Mukherji

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  1. Tushaar Shah
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  2. O. P. Singh
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Correspondence to Tushaar Shah.

Appendix 1: List of IWMI partners in the study ‘Groundwater socio-ecology of South Asia”

Appendix 1: List of IWMI partners in the study ‘Groundwater socio-ecology of South Asia”

Country/region

Research partner

Pakistan

International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Lahore

Bangladesh

Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Dhaka

Nepal Terai

Technical Development Associates Kathmandu

West Bengal, Assam, Bihar

IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program

Punjab and Haryana

Market Research Field Services, New Delhi

Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal

DRISTI Strategic Research Services, Mumbai

Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka

Institute of Resource Development and Social Management (IRDAS)

Orissa

Shristi, Bhubaneswar

Maharashtra and Goa

Consult India, Nagpur

Madhya Pradesh

Centre for Advanced Research and Development (CARD)

Chhatisgarh

People's Research Centre, Bhopal

Rajasthan

PROGRESS, Rajasthan

Tamilnadu and Kerala

Dhan Foundation, Madurai

Gujarat

R Rajan, Independent Researcher

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Shah, T., Singh, O.P. & Mukherji, A. Some aspects of South Asia's groundwater irrigation economy: analyses from a survey in India, Pakistan, Nepal Terai and Bangladesh. Hydrogeol J 14, 286–309 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-005-0004-1

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