Irrigation

Featured Articles
August 10, 2022 The irrigation at all costs mindset and narrow policies for drought protection during the colonial rule ignored rainfed agriculture and local practices that sustained agriculture in the Bombay Deccan. This continues even today.
Recurrent droughts and the struggle for survival (Image Source: Gaurav Bhosale via Wikimedia Commons):
August 9, 2022 Ensuring irrigation through farm ponds in tribal Chhattisgarh
Many tribal farmers opted for individual farm ponds under MGNREGA ensuring protective irrigation. (Image: Meenakshi Singh)
April 8, 2022 Lack of governance and six toothless irrigation acts have done very little to change the water situation on the ground in Maharashtra, argues water expert Pradeep Purandare.
Peanut irrigation in India (Image Source: Seratobikiba via Wikimedia Commons)
March 11, 2022 Subsidies enable tribal farmers to adopt micro-irrigation systems providing them assured irrigation
A key mitigation strategy to deal with water scarcity due to climate change is on-farm management of water using techniques like micro-irrigation (Image: India Water Portal Flickr)
September 17, 2021 Benefits of well-managed commons on livelihoods
Collective efforts revived the canal structure of Bichhiya dam bringing water to the village (Image: Foundation for Ecological Security)
August 29, 2021 Experience of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India) in revitalizing the traditional phad irrigation system in hilly tribal villages of Western Madhya Pradesh
Community members contribute voluntary labour required for laying the pipeline network and tank construction (Image: Anjali Aggarwal)
Groundwater in 30 districts in Delhi-NCR contaminated, reveals 2019 data
News this week Posted on 12 Mar, 2020 02:31 PM

30 districts in Delhi-NCR had contaminated groundwater in 2019: Water Minister

A resident in Delhi with her extracted groundwater (Source: IWP FLickr photos)
Women’s involvement in participatory water institutions in Eastern India
A study finds that women’s participation in water management institutions continues to be low in India in spite of the important role that they play in agriculture and irrigation. Posted on 10 Mar, 2020 06:42 PM

Women, major contributors in agriculture and irrigation

Women, neglected stakeholders in water management (Photocredit: Makarand Purohit for India Water Portal)
Suffering in silence: Migrant cane cutters of Maharashtra
Overworked, poorly paid and deprived of any rights, migrant cane cutters, especially women are most vulnerable and continue to suffer from a number of health and security risks. Posted on 27 Feb, 2020 10:04 PM

Maharashtra is the second largest sugar producing state in India, after Uttar Pradesh where as high as 1.6 million farmers cultivate sugarcane on 0.7 million hectares of land. The sugarcane industry provides direct employment to about 0.16 million workers while 1.5 million workers engage in sugarcane harvesting and transport operations every year.

Women workers suffer the most (Image Source: Azhar Feder, Wikimedia Commons-CC-BY-SA-3.0)
Sixty river stretches found polluted in the northeast: CPCB
News this week Posted on 22 Feb, 2020 09:53 PM

Northeast has 60 polluted river stretches: CPCB

A river in Assam (Source: IWP Flickr photos)
Decentralised groundwater governance to deal with the groundwater crisis
Decentralised groundwater governance frameworks that integrate democratic institutional mechanisms are needed to deal with the current groundwater crisis in India. Posted on 17 Feb, 2020 05:43 PM

The challenges to sustain groundwater dependency in India are many where groundwater over extraction is not only leading to rapid depletion of the resource, but also giving rise to water quality issues in a situation where the response at the level of policy continues to be lukewarm.

The need for decentralised governance to deal with the current groundwater crisis (Image Source: ACWADAM)
Decoding budget 2020
Is the budget a bummer? Experts speak at a panel discussion organised by CBGA. Posted on 10 Feb, 2020 04:35 PM

“Every single number in the budget, be it receipts or expenditure is a lie. The budget numbers can no longer be trusted, as the difference between actual expenditure and budget estimates are off by around 25 percent.

Woman farmer sifting grain (Image: Ray Witlin/World Bank CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Jal Jeevan Mission receives Rs 11,500 crore allocation in Budget 2020-21
Policy matters this week Posted on 06 Feb, 2020 10:07 PM

Government allocates Rs 11,500 crore to Jal Jeevan Mission for 2020-21

In the budget 2020-21, the Finance Ministry has allocated Rs 11,500 crore to the Jal Jeevan Mission for the year for 2020-21.

Women filling water from a tap (Source: IWP Flickr photos)
Perils, politics and prospects of groundwater in India
How can India change the game on groundwater management to deal with its overexploited aquifers? Posted on 05 Feb, 2020 03:15 PM

After independence, India was largely food insecure but post Green Revolution around the 1970s, foodgrain production increased manifold consequently reducing food insecurity and poverty in the country, in spite of rapid population growth. Its ability to achieve targeted results was largely dependent on the explosion of groundwater abstraction mechanisms like tubewells.

An irrigation well at Randullabad, Maharashtra. (Image source: India Water Portal on Flickr)
What's there for water in the budget kitty?
Budget fails to allocate enough to turn the rhetoric of tap water to each household into reality. Posted on 02 Feb, 2020 01:46 PM

Union Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman presented the decade's first union budget in the parliament on 1st February 2020. While presenting budget for 2020-2021, she started with the country’s vision for the decade in which she emphasised on water management and clean rivers as one of the 10 points of vision for the country.

The budget allocation suggests that the predominant focus of the Ministry of Jal Shakti continues to be on water resources development rather than water resources governance or management (Image: Brian Gratwicke, Flickr Commons, CC BY 2.0)
The Karnataka State Water Policy 2019
The Karnataka Jnana Aayoga (KJA) set up a Task Group to draft a new water policy for Karnataka in December 2017 and the report is now in public domain. What are the suggestions that the report makes? Posted on 20 Jan, 2020 11:42 AM

The water crisis in Karnataka has not only led to severe agrarian distress in the eastern plains region but also created an acute shortage of domestic water, in both rural and urban areas. The 21st century has seen significant changes in demography, economy and agriculture, increasing the demand for water in the state.

Groundwater depletion, a growing challenge (Image Source: India Water Portal)
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