Statistics can turn the world upside down, especially government statistics that falsify its own claims.
The data the government has on the net irrigated area, considered among the most reliable on the subject, show the area has not increased even an inch despite the government pouring crores into irrigation programmes.
One of the biggest culprits is the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme of the Water Resources Ministry. The scheme started in 1997 to help wind up pending irrigation projects fast with loans has since become a major funder of irrigation projects in the country.
But the net irrigated area, which was 55 million hectares in 1997, has risen only to 62 million hectares in 2007. Of these, six million hectares are thanks to groundwater irrigation while the land irrigated by canals has shrunk by one million hectares during this period.
So what did the AIBP achieve?
This was the question the Comptroller and Auditor General asked in 2004 and is bound to ask again in its next report.
But before that, the Planning Commission in its mid-term appraisal of the 11th Five Year Plan, has in a lengthy and rather angry critique of the programme stopped short of ordering it scrapped. It says the body should not fund any more new projects.
The Planning Commission finds fault with major and medium irrigation projects themselves. It says these projects have a gestation period of 15 to 25 years whereas they continue for 30 to 40 years, thanks to poor preparation and a thin resource spread.
Overall, 278 major/medium irrigation projects and 10,339 minor irrigation projects have received funds under AIBP since 1996-97. Central assistance under AIBP has grown dramatically from a mere Rs 500 crore in 1996-97 to Rs 7,598 crore in 2008-09. During 2002-08, AIBP funded 42 per cent of all major and medium irrigation projects. Of the targeted irrigation potential of 119 lakh hectares under AIBP-assisted major and medium projects, the irrigation potential created up to March 2009 was just 55 lakh hectares, about 46 per cent of the target.
“What is truly incredible is that during the years in which the AIBP has been implemented, the net irrigated area through canals has actually undergone an absolute decline, rather than achieving accelerated growth. From an average contribution to NIA of around 17.5 million ha in the mid-1990s, the area irrigated by canals has come down to less than 15 million ha in the first decade of the 21st century,” says the Planning Commission. Of the major and medium projects sanctioned under AIBP between October 1996 and March 2008, only 40 per cent projects were reported as completed. For minor irrigation projects, the figure was 3,253 out of 6,855 (47 per cent).
Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, who had pointed out this mismatch between the spending of money and the failure to increase the net irrigated area under canals some time ago, says the funds were meant for last-mile projects. But new projects were included too. The Polavaram dam got Rs 250 crore in the last month of the financial year 2008-09 a month after it got environmental clearance.
Again, it got another Rs 350 crore the next year, he says.
Sardar Sarovar Project, which is unlikely to be completed even in the next 15 years, got the maximum amount of money from AIBP. It does not take 30 years to cover the last mile of a project, says Thakkar.
Meanwhile, as Planning Commission gets ready for the 12th Five Year Plan, it may like to heed its own advice on the need for reforms in irrigation.
