This paper describes the informal groundwater market existing in the urbanperi-urban interface of Chennai. The private water tanker suppliers and packaged water industries utilize the land and water resources of the peri-urban villages. Thus, the groundwater sources in peri-urban areas play a significant role in meeting the growing urban demand. The villages that are experiencing the groundwater market are highly influenced by the urbanization and its related activities, due to their proximity to the city. The transfer of groundwater from the peri-urban villages not only deprives the peri-urban areas of their water rights but also leads to environmental damage. Agriculture declined in the water marketed villages in the range of 20-95 per cent during 1990-2007. The premonsoon and post-monsoon groundwater level fluctuation varied from 2-6 m to 0-5 m, respectively, during 1971-2007. The declining trend of the groundwater table and agriculture is highly significant in the water marketing villages. Moreover, the present groundwater quality is also in a susceptible state due to over extraction. Hence, strengthening the legal and institutional framework to ensure an equitable access to water for both urban and peri-urban areas is urgently required. This paper also describes the characteristics of the groundwater transfer, quantification of the marketed water, the role of the existing regulatory framework, and the institutional mechanisms. Many stakeholder's meeting and focus group discussions have been conducted in the villages under study for understanding the socio-economic implications of the water market. The study ultimately emphasized a sustainable groundwater extraction/market which will safeguard the interests of the peri-urban and urban communities.Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.
Water productivity (WP) expresses the value or benefit derived from the use of water. A profound water productivity analysis was carried out at experimental field at Field laboratory, Centre for Water Resources, Anna University, India, for rice crop under different water regimes such as flooded (FL), alternative wet and dry (AWD) and saturated soil culture (SSC). The hydrological model soil-water-atmospheric-plant (SWAP), including detailed crop growth, i.e, WOFOST (World Food Studies) model was used to determine the required hydrological variables such as transpiration, evapotranspiration and percolation, and bio-physical variables such as dry matter and grain yield. The observed values of crop growth from the experiment were used for the calibration of crop growth model WOFOST. The water productivity values are determined using SWAP and SWAP-WOFOST. The four water productivity indicators using grain yield were determined, such as water productivity of transpiration (WP T ), evapotranspiration (WP ET ), percolation plus evapotranspiration (WP ET+Q ) and irrigation plus effective rainfall (WP I+ER ). The highest value of water productivity was observed from the flooded treatment and lowest value from the saturated soil culture in WP T and WP ET . This study, reveals that deep groundwater level and high temperature reduces the crop yield and water productivity significantly in the AWD and SSC treatment. This study reveals that in paddy fields 66% inflow water is recharging the groundwater. There is good agreement between SWAP and SWAP-WOFOST water productivity indicators.
The aquifer of the peri-urban/rural areas of Chennai Metropolitan Area in Tamil Nadu acts as a source of informal water market, and a huge amount of water is transferred and marketed by entrepreneurs, such as private water suppliers and packaged water industries. Water transfer from agricultural to non agricultural uses is not only common in India but most of the water starved developing countries experience it. It leads to temporal and spatial changes in the groundwater quantity and quality, and generates the inequity and affordability issues in accessing the water especially to the peri-urban poor. The paper analyzed the above issue with a case study conducted at Perumbakkam, a Chennai peri-urban village. The multivariate statistical analysis of field findings has been conducted in the peri-urban village for understanding the socio-economic implications of the groundwater market. The study identifies the major findings due to the prevailing informal groundwater market and emphasizes the institutional mechanism through regulatory and legal measures to protect the resource base and conservation and restoration mechanism to replenish the depleting resources.
The utilization of treated paper mill effluents for irrigation offers many benefits such as conservation of water resources, conversion of barren land into irrigated area, addition of nutrients to the soil and plant and above all the reduction of pollution of inland water bodies. However, the utility of this effluent irrigation programme depends mainly on farmers' acceptability, adoption and management of the scheme. Knowledge about the farmers' perception is thus very much imperative for further advocacy of the effluent irrigation programme. The determinants of farmers' perception of treated paper mill effluent irrigation is a pre-requisite for the formulation of better programmes and strategies for the support of an unobstructed adoption and for the long-term sustainability of effluent irrigation schemes. The present study was conducted to assess the farmers' perception and the determinants that influence the adoption of treated paper mill effluent irrigation by interviewing a random sample of 120 farmers, using a well-structured interview schedule in paper mill effluent irrigated area in Tamil Nadu in India. The study revealed that there exists positive significant correlation between the perception and the characteristics of the farmers viz. educational status, farm size, annual income, mass media exposure, innovativeness and risk orientation. The response analysis of the perception revealed that treated paper mill effluent as alternative assured supply of irrigation water, conversion of elevated dry lands to irrigated land, changing of cropping pattern to sugarcane, increase in socioeconomic status of the farmers, incentives and technical inputs by the paper mill authorities and above all farmers' participation in planning, implementation and management of the effluent irrigation schemes influenced the farmers to form positive perception.
One of the methods for increasing productivity of water consumed in agriculture is by improved water supply management. This paper presents results from an optimization study of the Malampuzha irrigation project of the Bharathapuzha river basin of Kerala in India. The objective of this study is to determine whether significant improvements might be realized from optimization of operation of the reservoir system. To do this a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed and five different management strategies are tested. The result indicates that a management strategy with deficit irrigation by supplying less water in non-critical growth period and maximum water during stress sensitive periods is a best viable solution for better performance. A MILP model, rather than a linear programming (LP) model, is used to ensure that the reservoir does not spill before reaching its capacity.
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