Introduction
According to the Economic Survey 2023-24, India's irrigation coverage has expanded to encompass approximately 55% of the Gross Cropped Area. However, agricultural productivity exhibits pronounced spatial disparities, with Punjab recording wheat yields exceeding 4,500 kg/ha compared to around 2,000 kg/ha in resource-rich states like Odisha, highlighting that water availability alone does not guarantee uniform agricultural output.
Reasons for Regional Disparity in Agricultural Productivity
The divergence between irrigation infrastructure development and actual farm yields is driven by interconnected institutional, agronomic, and environmental dynamics across India's agro-climatic zones:
- Energy and Institutional Asymmetries: Unmetered or highly subsidized agricultural electricity in North-Western India has enabled extensive groundwater over-extraction, artificially inflating productivity. Conversely, Eastern India suffers from 'economic water scarcity'—possessing abundant alluvial groundwater reserves but lacking reliable power grids and capital access required for tube-well energization.
- Cropping Pattern and Agro-Climatic Mismatches: High Minimum Support Price (MSP) procurement has encouraged water-intensive crops like paddy in semi-arid zones of Punjab and Haryana, straining water tables. Meanwhile, sugarcane production has shifted toward Peninsular India primarily due to favorable tropical climates, longer crushing seasons, and higher sucrose recovery rates, rather than uniform canal expansion alone.
- Soil Degradation and Inefficient Application: Extensive flood irrigation without adequate subsurface drainage has triggered severe waterlogging, secondary soil salinization, and alkalinity, notably within the Indira Gandhi Canal command area. This has plateaued or diminished marginal yield returns despite abundant surface water.
- Fragmented Infrastructure and Land Holdings: Sub-optimal Command Area Development and small, fragmented landholdings across Eastern and Central India prevent individual farmers from investing in capital-intensive tubewells or synchronized canal-water distribution.
Measures for Promoting Sustainable Irrigation
To address yield stagnation and ecological degradation, irrigation policy must transition from physical resource augmentation to efficiency and demand management:
- Micro-Irrigation Adoption: Accelerate precision irrigation under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY - Per Drop More Crop) to transition from conventional surface flood irrigation to drip and sprinkler systems, targeting water use efficiency gains of 40–50%.
- Cropping Pattern Realignment: Institutionalize agro-ecological zoning through initiatives like the Sahi Fasal campaign, incentivizing shifts away from water-guzzling crops toward millets, pulses, and oilseeds in water-stressed belts like Marathwada and Rayalaseema.
- Energy-Irrigation Nexus Restructuring: Expand the PM-KUSUM scheme to deploy solar-powered agricultural pumps. Enabling farmers to sell surplus solar power back to the grid creates an economic opportunity cost for electricity, thereby disincentivizing continuous groundwater extraction.
- Participatory Water Governance: Empower water user associations (WUAs) and scale up community-led water budgeting and aquifer recharge under the Atal Bhujal Yojana.
Conclusion
Achieving equitable and climate-resilient agriculture necessitates shifting the policy benchmark from gross irrigated area to 'water productivity'—maximizing crop output per unit of water consumed. Integrating micro-irrigation, decentralized renewable energy, and participatory aquifer governance will ensure long-term sustainability across all agro-climatic zones.