The underlying cause

The new government has talked of reforms with a human face, and it has tried to address farmer distress""but it has not explicitly sought to link the two by looking at what might be the core underlying problem, which is the slowing down of work on creating irrigation capacity.

Not only has the annual growth in the expansion of irrigation capacity dropped from more than 2 per cent in the 1980s to less than 1.2 per cent now, the water distribution infrastructure has also been crumbling.

Consequently, despite having created the world's largest irrigation potential of nearly 80 million hectares, the net irrigated area today is no more than 60 million hectares.

The lack of proper effort for achieving command area development and the flawed operation of many irrigation systems is largely responsible for the poor capacity utilisation.

Inevitably, there has been a noticeable slowing down of agricultural growth and patchy progress on poverty alleviation. After all, every one million hectares brought under irrigation leads to between three and four million tonnes of additional production.

The induction of new technology, including the use of fertiliser and high-yielding seed varieties, is irrigation-dependent. Unless the dismal trends in irrigation expansion are suitably addressed, India's farming picture is unlikely to improve and without that the poverty picture in the rural areas will remain grim.

The official reckoning is that net irrigation expansion must be more than 5 per cent a year, if the target of 4 per cent agricultural growth is to be met. At the moment, that seems like a pipe dream.

The irrigation sector's stagnation and decline can be traced to two factors. First, there was the policy shift enforced in the Seventh Plan, which put a stop to work on all new medium and major multi-purpose river valley projects.

Second, there was the failure to collect realistic water charges to raise the money required for the maintenance and operation of irrigation networks.

Though the mounting cost and time over-runs on a slew of incomplete projects (some of which have been pending since the First Plan in the 1950s) may have been the cause of the decision to not start new projects, it has constrained the scope for irrigation expansion in the future because of the long gestation periods.

Moreover, many lingering projects have continued to languish despite the Centre's chipping in with resources through the accelerated irrigation development programme. This is due largely to the resource crunch at the state level.

Thus, much of the increase in irrigation potential in recent years has come only in the minor irrigation sector, through private investment. But, due once again to misplaced pricing policies that have encouraged indiscriminate water exploitation, there is now the problem of rapid depletion of the groundwater and deterioration in land and water quality, caused by waterlogging and salination.

Sweeping reforms in the irrigation sector, aimed at the early completion of existing projects and proper command area development, are essential and urgent.