There is an urgent need to increase the existing water use efficiency in Indian agriculture, mainly due to the increasing demand for water from different sectors and the rapid decline of the available potential of water. Water use efficiency under the flood method of irrigation (FMI), predominantly practised in India, is very low owing to enormous losses in distribution and evaporation. The drip method of irrigation (DMI) introduced recently helps to increase water use efficiency significantly, besides increasing the productivity of crops. However, not many studies are available focusing on the effectiveness of the drip method of irrigation in the context of the sustainable use of irrigation water. An attempt is made in this paper to bring out the importance of the drip method of irrigation in the sustainable use of irrigation water using both primary and secondary level information. The results of experimental station data show that water saving from DMI varies from 12% to 84% per hectare for different crops besides increasing the productivity of crops. The farm level data do confirm that DMI helps to save water by 29% for bananas and 37% for grapes per hectare over FMI in addition to substantial increases in productivity. The core and net potential areas of DMI are estimated to be 51.42 million hectares (mha) and 21.27 mha, respectively, for the country as a whole. The achievable total saving of water, by utilising the net potential area of DMI, is estimated to be about 11.271 million ha m. From the saving of water, an additional irrigated area of 11.22 mha under FMI or 24.12 mha under DMI can be created.
The main objective of this study is to quantify the marginal impacts of irrigation and selected input factors on spatial (across 14 states) and temporal (from 1970–1993) variation in the rural poverty level in India. The study uses the head count ratio measure (percent of population below the poverty line) of poverty to evaluate how the poverty level is affected by input factors: irrigation, adoption of HYVs, fertilizer application, rural literacy rate and rural road density. It was found that marginal (incremental) impacts of irrigation followed by the rural literacy rate were larger in explaining the variation of rural poverty level in India than those of other factor-inputs selected. The marginal impact of groundwater irrigation on poverty reduction was larger than that of canal irrigation, which is due to greater control in the application and widespread use of groundwater irrigation than of canal irrigation. Despite mixed findings about the impact of irrigation on poverty from past studies, we have found large-scale marginal impacts of irrigation on rural poverty in India. This quantitative information is expected to be useful for designing targeted poverty alleviation and rural development strategies that also enhance agricultural-productivity growth.
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