Pakshal SecretryAIR 8 · CSE 2025 · 243 wordsTheir whole copy
Opening · a figure
The water use efficiency in India is 37%, which highlight suboptimal irrigation (WOE = 98% in Israel)
PMKSY: More crop per drop
Body · points and prose
→ Promotion of Drip Irrigation & precision Agriculture → Integrated water development planning for agriculture → Ensure Synergies → 3 ministries and various sub-schemes → focus on watershed development to improve irrigation efficiency
Outcomes are suboptimal
(1) Low Adoption of Micro-Irrigation(MI)
- Only 8.8% farms in India
have MI (vs 60% in USA) (2) Cereal centricity of cropping for water guzzling Rice in rainfed areas
(3) High cost of installing MI system.
(4) Need of Technical expertise for operation (low awareness among farmers)
(5) Practical constraints → Trappling of MI system by animals → issue of sediment deposit and blockage of holes → Small & marginal farmers (78%) → not able to adopt
Reforms Needed
(A) Vaidyanath Committee (1) Subsidise price of installing MI system (2) for small farmers → focus on
pooling and custom hiring of micro-irrigation 3. Shift to resilient crops like Millets for improving efficiency
(B) Ashok Gulati (Agro-Economist) 4. Technology use : Tensiometer , fertigation to improve irrigation use efficiency 5. Market for water → pricing mechanism 6. Reform electricity subsidy to reduce water intake.
(C) Other Steps 7. Better Targeting of scheme 8. gram panchayat level monitoring
Close · a way forward
of outcome → water panchayats
"Water can easily become in 21st century what oil was in 20th century". Thus focus should be on 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse Recycle