Economic Implications of Agricultural Water Use in Eastern India

Abstract

The irrigation services are often state-subsidized in agrarian economies for the enhancement of agricultural productivity while they also target poverty alleviation. The agriculture-dependent states of India offer representative examples of undervalued irrigation services mainly sourced by canal networks. However, canal irrigation is nowadays lagging behind private groundwater initiatives but with significant costs which question the concept of low water pricing in agriculture. This paper assesses irrigation water costs in representative backward clusters of Bihar state in eastern India while the effects on different landholding groups are analysed. The results indicate that marginal landholders heavily rely on purchased water from unofficial markets while they pay the highest amount for irrigation. This is due to limited access in the canal network, possession of inefficient pumping systems and cultivation of crops with a high demand for water. However, acute policy reforms could drastically decrease water costs and improve agricultural productivity.

Acknowledgements

The research was undertaken through the project “Sustainable livelihood improvement through need-based integrated farming system models in disadvantaged districts of Bihar” funded by the NAIP-IFAD grant and the “Basin focal project of the Indo-Gangetic basin” funded by the Challenge Program on Water and Food.

Notes

1. A cluster is considered as a compound of small settlements which may be formed as villages or sparse inhabitants' areas.

2. Head is defined as the energy divided by weight or the amount of energy used to displace an object divided by its weight. The head of the pump actually represents the energy required to pump water from a certain depth by also including the friction losses inside the well and the pipe (Chaurette, 2010).

3. The ICER/RCER has provided sufficient data to the authors in May 2009 for the sub-optimization of water use in the surveyed districts.