‘Put a price tag on water for irrigation, end free power’

Astudy titled “Water Productivity: Mapping of Major Crops” has called for pricing water used in irrigation to at least recover the operation and maintenance costs of structures such as canals, and also end free power, which has been used indiscriminately to exploit groundwater resources.

The study, jointly done by the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, has advocated disincentivising the cultivation of water-intensive crops like sugarcane in Maharashtra and rice in Punjab, and move them to eastern Indian states through better procurement policies.

Rice, wheat and sugarcane, which together account for 43 per cent of the cropped area in the country, consume almost 80 per cent of freshwater.

Transport and Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari, who was chief guest at the launch, seemed to disagree with some of the findings of the study on the grounds that if wheat and rice were not grown in states such as Punjab and Haryana, India’s food security would be in peril.

Also, stopping sugarcane cultivation in water-scarce regions of Maharashtra overnight won’t be possible, and therefore efforts should be made to use water judiciously in such areas, such as through drip-and-sprinkler irrigation.

“Please don’t ask Vidharbha farmers to stop growing sugarcane because that is the only crop that is fetching some returns. Also while we look at shifting the cultivation of water-guzzling crops, we should look at solutions through which millions of gallons of water is stopped from going to waste,” Gadkari said.

He said water was not in shortage in India, but “we lack proper methods to stop wastage of water”.

On the controversy over uses of surplus food for fuel, Gadkari said there was opposition to this from within the government, and he had a tough time convincing all that farmers would benefit in the long run because there wouldn’t be any shortage of sugarcane, sugar beet, rice straws, etc which have been included in the new alternative fuel policy announced by the government.

“Bureaucrats and thinkers sitting in Delhi unfortunately have a very anti-farmer mindset. Recently, I saw a presentation, in which it was shown that food inflation has gone down, but at whose expense,” Gadkari said. He said the country needed to move towards third-generation ethanol produced directly from corn and other crops. Agriculture Secretary S Pattanayak, who was present at the book launch, seemed to agree with Gadkari, asking that if Punjab and Haryana did not grow wheat and rice, what would happen to the food security of the nation.

“In the US corn and soybean are grown primarily as feedstock, but that is not the case in India,” Pattanayak said in an apparent response to calls for using surplus farm production to meet the country’s energy needs.

The report, meanwhile, apart from advocating rejigging of pricing and procurement policies for main water-guzzling crops like rice, wheat and sugarcane, also advocated direct benefit transfers of input subsidies into the bank account of farmers instead of subsidising inputs.

“This direct benefit transfer of input subsidies will increase the purchasing power of farmers, stop much of the leakages of precious inputs and give right signals for their efficient use,” the report said.

It also suggested rationalising supplies in canal irrigation, expanding the microirrigation network, and encouraging participatory irrigation management through water user associations and farmer-producer organisations.

Rice, wheat and sugarcane, which together account for 43 per cent of the cropped area in the country, consume almost 80 per cent of freshwater