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This scenario plays out across several
regions of India, where Kumar
and other struggling farmers are held
hostage to lack of power availability,
rapidly receding groundwater levels
and vagaries of the monsoon. Nowhere
is the link between water, energy and
poverty alleviation more stark than in
these regions, creating a cycle that often
spirals out of control.
The agriculture sector in India uses
85 percent of the available freshwater.
That groundwater is India’s predominant
water resource for agriculture is
reflected in the fact that the net irrigated
area under canal irrigation fell from 41
percent in 1971 to 31 percent in 1999,
while during the same period the area
irrigated by groundwater (tube wells)
increased from 14 percent to 36 percent.
Higher agricultural productivity,
declining farm sizes and more frequent
droughts have induced a dramatic rise
in groundwater utilization. Decreasing
public investment in irrigated infrastructure
(for example, canals) has also
meant more groundwater use. During
the period 1971–2010, the area irrigated
by groundwater increased sevenfold:
from 5 million hectares (about 12.5
million acres) to more than 35 million
hectares (about 87.5 million acres).
More reliable groundwater delivery
and declining extraction costs due
to advances in technology and, most
important, government subsidies for
power and for installation of groundwater
structures (for example, irrigation
pump sets) have contributed to this
growth. With 16.8 million energized
pump sets throughout the country, India
has more than four times the number of
irrigation structures of China, Iran,
Mexico and the United States combined.
Agriculture and Water Waste
Compounding the problem of water use
is the poor farm-irrigation efficiency of
only 20 percent to 50 percent. The other
50 percent to 80 percent of irrigation
water is wasted. Combining these data
42 SAISPHERE
indicates the agricultural sector in India
is squandering about half of the country’s
total freshwater supply. However,
from a basin perspective, we find that
much of the “wasted” water is reused, so
the loss is less than the figures indicate.
Nevertheless, water-use efficiency is
a key consideration, and yield per unit
of water should be maximized. The
latter also has a direct and deleterious
impact on the degree of exploitation of
groundwater and falling groundwater
tables across India. Nowhere is this
depletion more acute than in north
India, where the states of Rajasthan,
Punjab and Haryana have all the ingredients
for groundwater depletion: staggering
population growth, rapid economic
development and water-hungry
farms, accounting for about 95 percent
To put these numbers in perspective, the $6.6 billion power
subsidy is comparable to the country’s annual expenditure for
education and more than double its expenditure for health.
of their groundwater use. Data provided
by India’s Ministry of Water Resources
suggest that groundwater use is exceeding
natural replenishment, but the
regional rate of depletion is unknown.
Groundwater levels have been declining
by an average of 1 meter every three
years (1 foot per year). More than 109
cubic kilometers (26 cubic miles) of
groundwater disappeared between 2002
and 2008—double the capacity of India’s
largest surface water reservoir, the Upper
Waingang, and triple that of Lake Mead,
the largest man-made reservoir in the
United States. Observations from the
NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment satellites and simulated soilwater
variations from a data-integrating
hydrological modeling system show that
groundwater is being depleted at a mean
rate in excess of the rate of replenishment
in the Indian states of Rajasthan,
Punjab and Haryana (including Delhi).
On the energy front, there are inefficiencies
as well. The agricultural sector,
on average, accounts for about 22 percent
of the total electricity consumption
in India. The figure is somewhat higher
in agricultural states such as Andhra
Pradesh (31 percent), Gujarat (32 percent),
Haryana (36 percent), Karnataka
(36 percent), Madhya Pradesh (30
percent) and Tamil Nadu (22 percent).
However, from a revenue perspective,
the sale of this electricity amounts to no
more than 5 percent to 10 percent of the
state electricity utility’s revenue.
The reason for this perverse state
of financial affairs is the adoption of
flat-rate pricing for agricultural power.
Under this system, when a farmer
pays a fixed price per horsepower per
month for electricity, the marginal
cost of pumping is zero. This leads to
energy waste, overpumping and inefficient
selection of crops. Moreover, flatrate
pumping masks the true cost of
power to farmers. When unreliability
is factored in, most farmers incur costs
of 4.5 to 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour,
more than what typical urban dwellers
pay. From a political and economic
perspective, the flat-rate structure
enables the state to give the impression
of providing subsidized power to the
rural, voting population whether or
not that population actually receives
the intended subsidy.
Summing up, the tariff structure and
the combination of poor technology
and management are responsible for
water loss, unsustainable exploitation of
groundwater, and the high energy losses
associated with the distribution and
end use of electricity in groundwater
pumping.
Water-Energy Nexus
Access to groundwater is the most critical
factor determining the reliability of
irrigation water supplies, which in turn
is key to the full “green revolution”
package of fertilizers, seeds and other
inputs. Without reliable water supplies,
the risk associated with other investments
in agricultural production is high
because everything can be lost due to
variations in precipitation, forcing small
and marginal farmers into poverty.
Since groundwater availability is
relatively independent of fluctuations
in rainfall and there is often substantial
interannual storage, a farmer’s access to
water is rarely threatened by climatic
changes—at least on a short-term basis.
This gives groundwater irrigation a substantial
advantage over surface irrigation
with regard to poverty alleviation.