Paper - Micro Irrigation Technologies - Experience & Issues Involved in their Promotion in developing countries

B.H. Jain, Chairman,
Jain Irrigation Systems Limited, Jalgaon

Abstract

Available water resources remaining the same, growing population has resulted in competition for them from Agriculture, domestic and industrial sectors. Irrigation water was the principal component of green revolution, which offered ‘Food Security’ to many countries. However, over-exploitation, pollution and poor concern for recharge, reuse and recycling of water has resulted in water stress and water scarcity in many parts of the globe. The situation is quite alarming and is a cause for many social tensions and inequities in different sections of the society in developing countries that can not afford high and costly investments in large dams.

Microirrigation system (MIS) is a versatile management tool which can increase productivity per unit volume of water and also save up to 50 % water in addition to other saving in farm input costs. This technology, if accepted on wide scale, can address the problem of water scarcity and equitable distribution squarely because it is neither location nor crop specific. It can also even out social equity issues involved in distribution of water. However, its initial capital cost is high and as such without Government’s active financial support and incentives, it is unlikely to become popularly acceptable.

In India, with Government’s support and aggressive private sector pioneering efforts, message is quite well spread in short span of about a decade. This speedy coverage has given rise to some core issues and unless we take hard decisions, the progress may down slow. To some extent, high subsidies can become counter-productive and retrograde the progress of MIS in this country. However, given proper perspective, these distortions in subsidy disbursement mechanism can be modified for the subsidy to be more effective. All in all, in India the area under MIS is next only to USA and is rising at the rate of about 40%. Estimated one million acres are under MIS in India. India does provide a workable model for adoption of MIS by small farmers on large scale in developing countries. The major policy issues are outlined for the widespread adoption of microirrigation system (MIS) in developing countries.