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Food security in India
is believed to depend on a good monsoon, yet despite a number of years
with
plentiful rainfall, agriculture growth is stagnating. Almost seventy
percent of India's
arable land is still not irrigated and can produce only one crop during
the
rainy season. India
wants to grow two to three crops in a year to make its population
hunger free.
Therefore we have launched so many schemes on irrigation.
Surindar Sud explains the reason why farmers in the rainfed areas are
marginalized. The annual rainfall in Bihar
and Orissa is roughly double that of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Yet, these states (Bihar
and
Orissa) have double the poverty ratio (above 40 per cent) than in
Rajasthan and Gujarat
(less than
20 per cent).
These are the facts that the CEO of the newly constituted National
Rainfed Area
Authority (NRAA), J S Samra, cites to bring out the disconnection
between
rainfall and poverty as also, for that matter, between rainfed
agriculture and
poverty.
What
really make a difference are the management of the rainfall and the
choice of
crops. In Bihar and
Orissa, the
farmers usually grow paddy, a water-guzzler, in rainfed areas rather
than the
crops needing less water as is done by their counterparts in Rajasthan
and Gujarat.
In fact, the world over, rainfed paddy and poverty go hand in hand.
This is
because much of the available production-enhancing technology is meant
for
irrigated rice and not for rainfed paddy. [1]
Besides,
in the case of rainfed paddy, many farmers have to keep their land
fallow
(uncultivated) in the Rabi season due to exhaustion of soil moisture.
This
results in poor crop intensity and consequential low farm incomes.
About 37 per
cent of the rainfed paddy land remains uncropped in the rabi season in Bihar
and over 31 per cent in Orissa. In many other states, this figure is
far
higher. In the irrigated areas, on the other hand, paddy growers can
raise two,
or in some cases, even three crops a year on the same land.
Usually rain fed agriculture is considered the sign of poor
agricultural
system. Rain-fed agriculture is mostly practiced by small and resource
less
farmers in Indian states. It's because monsoon is uncertain and farmers
have to
play gambling with monsoon. From years farmers are dependent on monsoon
and
they have an idea of when the monsoon would arrive. Due to changes in
the
climate it is now very difficult for them to depend on monsoon for
their water
needs. The option for irrigation facility is not any better one. What
if you
give water to your crop through bore-well or pipe water and monsoon
suddenly
arrives. We need to find a solution in between.
Our
dependence on perennially irrigated land is largely due to the
cultivation of
crop varieties such as the hybrids of the Green Revolution and now the
genetically modified varieties which require much more irrigation
water, just
as they do more fertilizers and pesticides. This is not the case with
traditional varieties some of which are also highly productive and to
which, in
some areas of India,
farmers are beginning to return to.
[2]
Government
spends so much money on irrigation projects. The free electricity for
farmers
has proved disastrous to the government because farmers are shifting to
the
crops which require a large amount of water and electricity mainly
genetically
modified crops.
What
has compounded the water crisis is the faulty cropping pattern. All
these
years, the dryland regions of the country, which comprise nearly 75 per
cent of
the total cultivable area, have increasingly come under the hybrid crop
varieties. While the crop yields from the hybrid varieties were high,
the flip
side of these varieties - these varieties are water-guzzlers - was very
conveniently ignored. For the sake of comparison, let us take the
example of
rice. The high-yielding varieties of rice normally require about 3000
litres of
water under drylands to produce one kg of rice. Common sense therefore
indicates that the rice varieties allowed to be cultivated in the
dryland
regions of the country should be those that require less amount of
water.
However, a large portion of the cultivable lands in drylands are now
sown under
with hybrid rice varieties which require still more water for growing
(its
requirement of water touches 5000 litres for one kilo of rice grain). [3]
On top
of that government is increasing its budget for major irrigation
projects. For
instance, Project Jalayagnam, will see the completion of 31 irrigation
projects
in the next five years in Andhra Pradesh at a projected cost of Rs
46,000 crore.
- One of the solutions is to capture rain
for future use. Rain water harvesting is a viable solution to our
growing irrigation demand. There are several rain water harvesting
structures. [Ref. CED Backgrounder on Water].
- It is not bad at all to
depend on monsoon we just need to track when monsoon arrives.
- Abandoning the cultivation
of water intensive crops.
- We must return to the
traditional varieties of subsistence crops most of which are rain-fed,
and to traditional methods of irrigation which are seasonal.
- We should look for location
specific crops. We need to study which crops are suitable to which
particular region based on availability of water.
- The cropping pattern must be
developed such that soil moisture is retained.
- Drip irrigation system helps
in conservation of water and crops are not flooded with water. [4]
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