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India’s Irrigation Crisis
A death that spotlights irrigation problems
Context: On March 13, 2025, Kailash Arjun Nagare, a recipient of the 2020 Young Farmer Award from Maharashtra, died by suicide—citing long-standing irrigation issues as a key factor.
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- His tragic death has spotlighted a growing crisis in India’s agricultural sector: the deep-rooted inequities and unsustainable practices in water access and irrigation.
- While India has the highest water usage in agriculture globally, access remains uneven, and water scarcity is as much a result of poor governance and social inequality as it is of physical shortage.
- The country’s irrigation problem is thus not just environmental—it’s deeply structural.
India’s Unsustainable Dependence on Irrigation
- Agriculture accounts for nearly 80% of India’s total water withdrawal, consuming approximately 688 billion cubic metres annually, the highest in the world.
- Yet this heavy reliance is not translating into sustainable growth.
- Much of the irrigated land is concentrated in water-stressed regions like the north-west and sub-tropical belts, where water-intensive crops such as rice, wheat, and sugarcane are dominant.
- According to a 2024 study published in Nature Water, India alone contributed 36% of global unsustainable irrigation expansion from 2000 to 2015.
- The result: worsening water stress, environmental degradation, and socio-economic disparity.
Irrigation Inequality: Social and Regional Gaps
- Uneven Distribution: While irrigation can boost agricultural productivity, its benefits are unevenly distributed.
- Groundwater—India’s primary source of irrigation—is closely tied to land ownership, electricity pricing, and regional water markets.
- This has created a situation where tube well irrigation systems are marked by growing inequality, even as disparities in canal, tank, and well systems have declined.
- Impact on Marginalised Groups: Marginalised communities, especially women, face the harshest consequences of groundwater depletion.
- As climate change accelerates water scarcity, these vulnerable groups are further pushed to the margins.
Groundwater Depletion and Environmental Costs
- Over-Extraction’s Consequences: Nearly 17% of India’s groundwater blocks are categorised as ‘over-exploited’, and 3.9% are considered critical.
- Energy Consumption: The aggressive use of pumps for groundwater extraction is also fueling high energy consumption.
- Carbon Emissions: It is estimated that groundwater irrigation contributes 45.3–62.3 million metric tonnes (MMT) of carbon emissions annually—8-11% of India’s total emissions.
- Lower Efficiency: Moreover, India’s irrigation systems operate at just 38% efficiency, far below the global average of 55% in developed nations.
- Misaligned Cropping Patterns: Cropping patterns are misaligned with regional water availability.
- For example, Punjab’s rice productivity is high, but its irrigation water productivity (IWP) is one of the lowest.
- Tamil Nadu, despite leading in sugarcane productivity, also records low IWP.
- Paddy: Paddy rice, due to continuous flooding practices, has become the single largest contributor to global cropland greenhouse gas emissions, highlighting the environmental cost of current irrigation practices.
Solutions: A Shift Towards Water-Smart Farming
- Advance Water-Saving Irrigation Technologies: Promote micro-irrigation systems such as drip and sprinkler irrigation, especially for high water-demand crops like sugarcane and cotton.
- Implement Sustainable Water Management Practices: Introduce alternate wetting and drying (AWD) techniques in rice cultivation, which can significantly reduce water use and methane emissions.
- Adopt Solar-Powered Irrigation with Regulation: Deploy solar pumps in tandem with micro-irrigation, but avoid unregulated groundwater use.
- Strengthen Rainwater Harvesting: Encourage the construction of rainwater harvesting structures and tailwater storage pits as supplementary irrigation sources, especially in regions prone to seasonal droughts.
- Reform Irrigation Governance: Move away from supply-driven systems to demand-based irrigation allocation managed by Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) institutions.
- Promote Cropping Pattern Diversification: Encourage crop diversification through policy and price signals to shift farmers away from water-intensive crops in water-scarce regions.
