PROBLEMS IN IRRIGATION

Farmer suicides and distress has taken alarming proposition in the country Infact many suicides by farmers have been traced to the crop failure because of unpredictibility of rains That is why rapid expansion of irrigation was made one of the six components of the ambitious Bharat Nirman project currently undertaken by the central government But mere allocation of budgets is not going to solve the problem as we have already seen in equally ambitious project lunched a decade back under Accelerated irrigation benefit programme The major focus under accelerated programme was to focus resources on easy to complete project Sometimes facts can be harsh Despite all the ambitious planning no more than 1.4 million hectares of additional irrigation potential was reported to be created in the 10th five year plan But the fact is for more than half a century the country has added close to a million hectres of irrigation potentially annually If we compare to this the 10th five year plan performed dismally Similarly already lofty projections have already been made in the 11th five year plan Infact Bharth nirman programme of extending irrigation to 10 million hectares has not be met either The net result is that a sizeable part of the countrys total irrigation potential -recokned at 139.9 million hectares will continue to be unexploited for a long period to come The major problem of underperforming in this crucial sector is because irrigation is in the state list and most states are unable to raise resources required to be invested in irrigation Work under even the accelerated programme has got stuck because of the states failure to put in their share of resources-usually a half to a third of the centres allocation In addition to this the populist approach towards water and power charges have converted irrigation works from revenue generation to a financial burden This has affected not only the maintenance and operation of irrigation projects but also command area development work so as to make use of the irrigation capacity that has been created The result is water logging, and soil salinity So the country needs urgently water sector reforms including the fixation of realistic user charges and establishment of water user bodies for maintaining and operating irrigation works It is only when irrigation is made commercially viable then states and private institutional bodies will be prompted to invest in the expansion of irrigation