Three-fourths of India’s irrigation sources run on electricity: study

Subject :Geography

Section: Physical Geography

Context:

The latest edition of the Minor Irrigation Census (MIC) — a compendium of borewells, tubewells, and other privately owned irrigation sources by farmers — finds that electricity is the dominant source of power to extract water, over diesel, windmills, and solar pumps.

About Micro Irrigation Census (MIC):

A micro irrigation scheme is a type of irrigation project that uses surface water or groundwater to irrigate a culturable command area (CCA) of up to 2,000 hectares.
Released by- Ministry of Jal Shakti.
The MIC reports aren’t a reflection of the present state of use.
Because data collection requires collecting granular data down to the block level, it takes a few years to compile and make the data public.

Six MICs have been conducted so far:

The First Census of Minor Irrigation schemes was conducted with reference year 1986-87.
The Second Census with reference year 1993-94 was conducted in all States and Union Territories, except Gujarat, Maharashtra and UTs of Chandigarh, Daman & Diu and Lakshadweep.
The Third Minor Irrigation Census with reference year 2000-01 was conducted in all States and Union Territories except Daman & Diu and Lakshadweep.
The fourth Census in the series was conducted with reference year 2006-07 in all States and Union Territories except Daman & Diu and Lakshadweep.
The Fifth MI Census was conducted with reference year 2013-14 in all States and Union Territories except Daman & Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep.
The latest Sixth MI Census has been conducted with reference year 2017-18 in all States and Union Territories except Delhi, Daman & Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep.
The First census of water bodies has also been taken up in convergence with the sixth MI census.

Key findings of the sixth MIC:

Significant increase in electricity usage- From powering only 56% of sources in 2011 to 70% in 2017 shows electricity as powering 76% of sources – a slower growth rate.
- This electrification of groundwater withdrawal corresponds to a rise in the use of tube wells and borewells that are capable of extracting water at greater depths.
- While ‘dugwells’ or ponds that can draw water from a maximum depth of 15 meters, remain the dominant source of groundwater, their number has declined from 87 lakh to 82 lakh between the fifth and sixth editions.
- ‘Shallow’ tube wells, capable of drawing water from up to 35 metres too, have declined from 59 lakh to 55 lakh.
- ‘medium-sized’ wells – capable of withdrawing water from up to 70 meters – grew from 31 lakh to 43 lakh and ‘deep’ wells (beyond 70m) rose from 26 lakh to 37 lakh.
The report doesn’t discuss the causes for the increase of more powerful, and deep-reaching tubewells.

State wise analysis:

The groundwater situation varies across the country. Because different state governments announce different schemes where farmers are incentivised or get access to loans to buy such tubewells.
The lower growth in electrification is also likely to be a result of greater emphasis on energy efficient water extraction.
Overall, 23.14 million Minor Irrigation (MI) schemes were reported in the country from 695 districts and 6,47,394 villages. Out of all MI schemes, 21.93 million (94.8%) were for groundwater (GW) and 1.21 million (5.2%) for surface-water (SW) extraction.
Uttar Pradesh had the largest number of MI schemes in the country (17.2%) followed by Maharashtra (15.4%), Madhya Pradesh (9.9%) and Tamil Nadu (9.1%).
Leading States in GW schemes are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana whereas Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand have the highest share in SW schemes.
The number of MI schemes increased by about 1.42 million between the fifth and sixth editions.
Most of the schemes (96.6%) were privately owned and small and marginal farmers, having less than two hectares of land, owned the majority of MI schemes.

Ownership Breakdown:

Approximately 96.6% of MI schemes are under private ownership.
Among GW schemes, 98.3% are owned by private entities, and in SW schemes, this share is 64.2%.
For the first time, data on the gender of MI scheme owners was collected.
18.1% of individually owned schemes are owned by women.

Financing and Sources:

Around 60.2% of schemes are financed through a single source.
Own savings of individual farmers contribute significantly to single-source financing (79.5%).