Policy watch: Drip irrigation key to productivity

Mercifully, the gods have been benign, selectively though. While the floods have caused much grief, the parched plains have experienced relief.

But the spectre of the famine that hit Vidarbha – the worst-ever – has not been lost on Maharashtra’s policymakers. Unlike 1971, when there was no food, this time there was just no water.

For the first time, Maharashtra is seriously looking at Gujarat to replicate some of the policies introduced in that state to raise water tables and improve rural prosperity.

Among them were:
No new pump connections to farmers unless they introduce drip irrigation. Subsidies for installing the drip system were designed to help the farmer recover costs, yet make some good profits.

Build more check-dams to arrest the water and thus replenish ground water resources.  Today, Gujarat is the only state where water ground tables have been increasing.  This was because Narendra Modi used agricultural doles to build around 8 lakh check dams.  His slogan was, “Let the water in the ponds remain in the ponds, and the river water in the river.  There is no need for it to flow into the sea”.

Make drip irrigation suppliers responsible for providing extension services to farmers.  Only after such services are in place do drip irrigation companies get their subsidy amount on the systems supplied to farmers.  After all, it is the drip irrigation companies and their agronomists who can advise farmers on which crop to grow, how much water to provide to the crop and how to deal with situations when the crop is about to get blighted.

Netafim India, a wholly owned subsidiary of Netafim Inc of Israel, the world’s largest micro irrigation company, took up this challenge in Gujarat, and showed to farmers how less water could mean better yields (see table below).

Proper implementation of well-crafted policies as well as Netafim’s extension services, combined to make agriculture far more vibrant in Gujarat than ever before (watch this column for some success stories).

Some policymakers in Maharashtra have also begun advocating linking of subsidies for drip irrigation to the kind of crop farmers grow. Thus, a water-efficient crop would earn higher subsidies than a water-guzzling crop.

But with the most powerful politicians in Maharashtra promoting sugarcane, which is one of the biggest water-guzzlers among crops, will such a policy ever get passed?  Haven’t the politicians got their way in spite of the drought in Vidarbha?

However, given the productivity gains, even for crops like sugarcane (and even wheat and rice), this is one technology that is bound to get promoted even more aggressively than ever before.