Giving the Poor Better Access to Ground Water, India

In India, groundwater is an important source of irrigation. In fact, it fulfills more than 45 percent of the country's total irrigation needs. Developing access to groundwater for irrigation is vital to reviving agrarian economies. While ground water is replenished annually, water levels vary for diverse geological, topographic, and weather-related reasons.

In agricultural areas where the rains are unpredictable, mono-cropping is the norm. However, proper irrigation would increase yields dramatically and could turn whole regions into multi-cropping zones.

State governments thus have a vital role to play in providing small farmers with the capacity to access groundwater for irrigation purposes in those areas where the water table is high. In parts of the country where groundwater is plentiful, the government deveoped Minor Irrigation Schemes (for irrigated areas of less than 2,000 hectares) – such as tube-well programs – that make access to groundwater easy for the rural poor.

Most of these efforts failed, mainly due to the triple evils of red tape, political machinations, and corruption. There have been exceptions, however. In 1980, in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (UP), the two state governments brought market mechanisms into play while managing government pump subsidies and loan programs for rural farmers in eastern Bihar and north UP.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the genesis of this scheme did not lie in a real desire to alleviate rural poverty by reviving agriculture. Rather, the state governments strained themselves to capture the huge bloc of votes of the powerful farmers' lobby. And capture it they did, for the farmers were highly satisfied with the new initiative. Rumblings from local bureaucrats were quashed before they could organize a full-fledged resistance – a classic example of "where there is a will, there is a way."

The basic concept was to use a "market push: to speed up the process of transforming the region's vast groundwater potential into wealth for poor farmers. Making local pump dealers active participants in the management of pump subsidy programs Wwas critical to this model.

Further, the private pump dealer was made to play a central coordinating role in the actual organization of the pump subsidy and in handling loan programs. This circumvented the local bureaucracy that might have scuttled operations.

The loans were issued directly to the supplying agency rather than to farmers, who might be tempted to spend the money elsewherer. They receive a cash receipt showing their loan amount and collect their pumps directly from the agency in return for a copy of the cash receipt.

Farmers were also given choice of receiving a diesel or electric pump. In villages with electricity, power was provided free to participating farmers. Because farmers were free to choose their preferred store, they naturally opted for retailers they trusted.

The average delivery time for a pumpset in eastern UP is now only 1-2 weeks. This level of service is far better than in other states without the program, where dealers extract a heavy "service charge" from farmers for providing these services. Some 800,000 small diesel pump-operated tube wells have been installed in the state since 1985, irrigating 2.4 to 3.2 million hectares of arable land.

To counter depletion of groundwater levels from such intensive mining, the state governments used water harvesting strategies. They also set up filtration plants to reduce water salinity and to reduce arsenic levels wherever this was a problem.

This strategy has been producing myriad spin-offs. Once the potential for profit became evident, the number of private dealers began to multiply overnight.

The intense competition has induced these businesses to begin delivering a range of new, rapid, and useful, value-added services to small farmers. Eager to win the farmers' business, pump dealers do all the paperwork and legwork necessary to get the required clearances and approvals. They take care of organizing the bank loans, and arrange the issuing of pipes, pumps and the drilling of boreholes while the local bureaucrats are left biting the dust.

For more information, see "Bringing Pumps to People," issue 2 of the Water Policy Briefing series.

Email: navaraj678@sify.com