The agricultural sector accounts for almost 80% of the water withdrawal in India. Every year, 688 billion cubic metres of water is consumed by the farm sector, the highest in the world. Irrigation is an inevitable input for increasing agricultural production. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
On March 13, 2025, Kailash Arjun Nagare, a 2020 Young Farmer Award recipient, from Maharashtra, died by suicide, citing unaddressed irrigation demands. While India reports the highest water usage in agriculture globally, access to water for irrigation remains a contentious issue. Nagare’s death points towards the inequity in distribution, with social inequalities, water governance mechanisms, and policies determining the contours of allocation. The problem of water scarcity in India is thus multifaceted, indicating the co-existence of actual physical shortage with economic scarcity due to inequitable access and management.
Untenable expansion
The agricultural sector accounts for almost 80% of the water withdrawal in India. Every year, 688 billion cubic metres of water is consumed by the farm sector, the highest in the world. Irrigation is an inevitable input for increasing agricultural production. However, its expansion has been highly untenable. The majority of the area under water-guzzling crops such as rice, wheat, and sugarcane is currently in the water-scarce north-west and sub-tropical belts of the country. According to a study published in Nature Water (2024), India alone accounted for 36% of global unsustainable irrigation expansion that happened between 2000 and 2015, with environmental and socio-economic implications.
Even as irrigation has been proven to drive economic prosperity, various studies have reported that uneven progress has reinforced existing inequalities, between and within States. Considering that ground water is the dominant water source for irrigation in India, property rights, energy pricing policy, and the existence of well-functioning water markets have remained critical in determining water access to farms. Accordingly, while inequity has declined in canal, tank, and well irrigated systems, it has increased in the tube well irrigated system. Marginalised groups, especially women, are also disproportionately affected by increasing deprivation and decline of water tables with climate change intensifying disparities.
The environmental and financial consequences of aggressive groundwater extraction have also been profound. Due to over extraction, almost 17% of India’s groundwater assessment units are deemed ‘over-exploited’ while 3.9% are in a ‘critical’ state. Intensive pumping has also resulted in massive energy consumption resulting in excessive carbon emissions. As per the latest data, 45.3–62.3 MMT of annual carbon emissions is attributed to groundwater irrigation, which constitutes 8-11% of India’s total carbon emissions.
The operating efficiency and water use efficiency has also remained sub-optimal in Indian agriculture. While irrigation systems in India report an operating efficiency of 38%, in developed countries it is 55%. Coupled with misaligned cropping patterns and inefficient water use practices, irrigation water productivity (IWP) has also remained low in the major irrigation belts of the country. For example, Punjab, which claims the highest land productivity in rice, has one of the lowest IWPs for the crop. Similarly, in sugar cane, Tamil Nadu records the highest land productivity with IWP being dismally low. Besides water wastage, the adoption of non-optimal water management practices have been causing other negative externalities such as high GHG emissions as well. For example, with continuous flooding of rice as the major water management practice, paddy rice is the biggest contributor to global cropland emissions.
Considering the over-exploitation of ground water resources, impending water scarcity and environmental externalities, further attempts to improve the irrigation system of the country should be built on efficient water-saving technologies, improved irrigation efficiency, and alternative sources of irrigation.
The way forward
While change in cropping patterns and ground water usage regulations through policy decisions should also be aimed at in the medium and long term, advancing irrigation technologies and practices based on sustainable intensification should be prioritised. Better irrigation efficiency may be aimed through the improvement of conveyance and application efficiency of irrigation systems. In geographies where water withdrawals and GHG emissions have been highest, alternative water management technologies such as alternate wetting and drying, which can result in significant water saving and reduced emissions, may be popularised. Similarly, micro-irrigation systems such as drip irrigation, with minimal application losses, may be popularised in crops such as sugar cane. Promoting solar-powered irrigation and/or bundling solar pumps with micro-irrigation systems is another promising option. However, with the marginal cost of pumping being zero, this should not result in increased groundwater depletion and should be regulated through initiatives such as assured grid connection offering economic incentives for efficient utilisation. Rain water harvesting structures and tail water storage pits may be popularised as supplementary irrigation sources. Since traditional supply-based mechanisms do not necessarily promote equitable distribution of irrigation water, initiating demand-driven allocation systems run by participatory irrigation management structures should be widely promoted.
Lisa Mariam Varkey, Senior specialist, Socio-Economics, International Rice Research Institute
Published – May 14, 2025 01:53 am IST