India's Groundwater Resources Author(s): B. D. Dhawan Reviewed work(s): Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 12, No.

13 (Mar. 26, 1977), pp. A18-A20 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4365435 . Accessed: 27/11/2011 04:15
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India's

Groundwater
B D Dhawan

Resources

Surprisingly, firm estimiate.sof groundwvaterpotential of India are lackinig at present. In appraising grroundwater resources, it is im)erative that a clear distinction be made betweeen stock (imd flow dimensionI. From the stock viewtpoint, grouindwtateris probably atnimmense resource in India.. Buit, juidged fron the flow (iangle,it is a bouniitifulresouirce onily in the easternl Gangetic plains. Prtudenice requires uitilisation of grounldtwaterresource at a long-run annual rate of no more thiani ann ual accretion to grouindwater stock. Excess withdrawal is permissible only in areas prone to wtaterlogging. C,ANAL irrigation hals played a vital role in tr-ansiformninigthe precarious agricuilture of semi-arid regions p)articularlini north-west India - into pr-oductive a.griculture over the last 2,00 vears. Now it is groundwater Mvhich is playing a critical role in our agrlicultliral tranisform-lationi, ever since the advent of high-vielding variety I liYV) see ds. In f act, iiinnumnerable research investigations have highlighted a clCoserelationship hetween the success of IIA7X programmle in an area and the use of grouindwater irrigation ( specially ind(lividually-ownied tubewells atn(l wells fitted with power pumps. It is knowxn that well irrigation was al )andoned b)y miianyfarrmers wvhen canal irrigation was introduced in their area. Tw%omjaini factors responsible for this lwliavioiir of the irrigators were: (1) th- comparatively low cost of canal irri-igatioin ris-a-v is traditional well irrig,,ation, ani(l (2) thei not so exacting \\ateCr reI(llirenents of tralitional or (leosi crol) varieties vis-a-vis HYV seeds. Tlhe traditional varieties had evolved through a process of natural selection, (luring cuiltivationi extending over c('tliries, anti had thus acquired capacity to xvithstand siubstantial variations in wNater-application. Whatever dent xwas madle in their crop yield by untimeln wvater stupplies from public canals wals probably nimire than offset by the sharl) economny in irrigation cost following the sw itchover fronm well irrigation to canal irrigatiorn. The differential in respect of ir-rigation cost would be part.ciflarly large for Rabi and Zaid (Summ11l1ter) scasons, when the wvater table is lowerer than that during Kharif seasoin. For, the inarginal cost of lifting xvater with mllaiiual or animal-drawNn lifts rises sharply in anii open w-vell with an increalse ill the depth of water table. The advent of HYV seeds has once a(rain revived initerest in owning one's ow\N'nsource of irrigation so as to meet
timtely

s'ith vicissitudes of weather or with untimeliness in agricultural operations. In view of the critical importance of their water in agronomical regime tlcv halve inmplarted a tremendous spurt to investm ent in groundwvater irrigation. FIor a variety of reasons - such as Ca) couixentr-ation of agricultural developinent effort in areas already irrigated(- and (1)) better availabilitv of fariner's own investible funds in canal-iri igate(l areas one now finds that larmers in canal-irrigated tracts have tevinced verv keen interest in developing their own . sources of groundwater irrication. This conjulnctive use of groundwater \vith surface water in canal tracts k a verv wvelcomne development from the view-point of optimal use of our \N ltcr resources. The continued use of sources is the real answer _trrouudclwN,ater to the long-run dainger of water-logconsequent soil salinity in g1ingan canal-irri oate(l tracts. Where farmers are too poor or too small to undertake i. -vestmewnt in (groundwater irrigation, the State can inlvest in large thbewells \v'hioh would also augment and firm up) caial wvater supplies. Such augmI-ienitationl tubewells are now being 2anrned iii Uttar Pradesh. It can 'be easily that demonstated sourcc s of public irrigation are inhereuitly incapable of assuring timely irrig,ationD to every farmer in their commands. Even if their administrators are equippedl wvith necessaiy data about each farm)er's farm andl are provided with computer facilities to handle the niass of farmii iinformation about their irrigatiin coi-mmi-lands, they would still be unable to devise Nater delivery schedules so as to meet the irrigation ecilh ci-Op of every farmer. iiecds of It is true that this intrinsic problem of lack of timely irrigation can be minii)uised conisideralylv if (a) the size of the public irriglation project is kept small, (b) its culturable command is delibenotcv rl-educed so as to provide intensive or productive irrigation instead of protective or thini irrigation per unit (f irrigable land, and (c) the project is

strengthened vith a proper storage rese rvoir (not nededecl in case of public tulbevells) that wovuld cope with the vagi(raries the w\eather - the ultimaof te se)urce of p)ractically every macro(l,istl r)ance in th e conomn dtiring peeac timiie. Butt, then, these condition.s are difficult to ftulfill if technical and eg(alitarian considerations loom large wvhile Imnaking the decision on a project.

TI-.e I1IYV seeds, tunlike the earlier or desi seeds, perform well only when panipelred well with requisite inputs and care. In view of their exacting demand for water, ensuring timely irrigation for them is alImost impossible unless a fariner nlas control on the source of irrigation. In order to attain complete control on a water souirce its ownership is a inuist. a condition that is easily fulfilled
by groundwai-ter aciscompared to surface

water (ponds an(l small tanks being min-iorexceptions).' -lowNever, ownership of Soirce is only a necessary, but not a niifficient. condition for ensuring timely irrigation. In the event of failure of rains, dlug-wvells become an unreliable source. of i e, precisely irrigation \N hen there is pressing need for irrigation. Likewise, tiibewells, which are relatively less susceptible to drought, can beco-ome an uLnreliable source of irrigation. if the electricity supply system is inefficient and inadequate. In such a situation, diesel tubewells appear an for supporting attractive proposition IHY7 cuilt-ivatioi - though these tubewvells, too, make rather exacting demands of repair and preventive maintenance services not readily available to distant of a villages. In short, ownership groundwater source is no guarantee for tinmely irrigation to a farmer operating of underdeveloped in an environment intfrastructuire comprising electricity, roals, skills, repair an(l maintenance etc. Whereas the advent of HYV seeds alas generated widespread appreciation of ,r(o?ndwater resouirces, some fanciful and sominetotally erroneous notions do persist about this vital resource. For

irrigation needs of the new va-

Sinice these varieties are not -ieties. IaiprodIuct of niatural selection, they are hound to lack in hardiness for coping A-18

ECONOMIC AND

POLITICAL

WEEKLY stum. Compared to this massive figure. the groumndwsZater(flow) potential of Uttar Pradesh is reckoned at no more than 14 mhm Jby any expert. For, this potential is worked out on the 'safe ,,icld' principle - i e, determining the voliumne of water which annually flows into the ground (below crop root zone, sav 10 feet below the land surface) extracted andl which can be safely without any untowNard decline in water table. The stock of groulndwater has been built graduially from times immemorial. Evidently, this water cannot be exploitcl on the same principles as other mnineral resources, for which new sources of deposits or substitute minerals are often discovered before long. lPruidence requires its utilisation at a lon(g-run anniual rate of no more than the annuLalrecharge of the groundwater stock. Exceptions from this prudent policy are conceivable in two circumstances One such circunmstance is vhen there is water-logrgingf in the crop root zone. whicll tells uipon crop production. l)espite the loxv inteinsity of irrigation in canal commands. considerable waterloggina has occturred in the old canal areas. Overdraft above aninual recharge would be a sensible policy in su-ch areas so long as the wvater table is loxvered appreciably below the crop root zone. The other permitting circumstaince for oveid-raft on groui(lxvater stock may be one in wvhich prolonged overdraft gives rise to a newv eqtilibrium level of water tal)le. This once-for-all depletion in ater resource m]ay be beneficial gJroundw in areas which are criss-crossed by rivser-s and streams uinderlain wvith coarse sand( deposit, wvith the result that 'ind(uced' reeharge of groundwvater goe s ulp sufficiently so as to match the af overdr,d t. In a way, this is essentially a scheme for augmenting the groundwater potential. How ever. it needs to be implemented with great care. One ha5s to guard against lowering of the water table beloxv the bed level of a the 'base' (non-monriver; othervise soonial) flows of rivers may (lisappear This can create serious altogether. problems for those who benefit from In the off-season flo\x of the rivers. particuflar, the fish poptulation of the rivers can be seriotusly threatened and the disposal of city and industrial liquid wvastes canl become a big problem. Also. the wsater table should liot be stabilised at such a great depth that eitlher it becomes uneconomic to lift water with private meanes from such a dlepth, or
Y\

of Agricuilture Of

Mairch 1977

example, very ianay people are under thle illulsion that u-nlimited water supif plies exist l)elow the land surface: reach this water, dugdtug-wells anm-not cLum-l)ore wells or tubewells should be They do not know that, constructed. quite ofteni, deeper strata of ground\w ater are saline and brackish wherever scanty wvater is encountered in the Such tipper portionis of the ground. saline waters, if uised for irrigation, can
lead to salt accimulation on soil surface,

thereby rendering land unfit for cultivation before long In appraising (groundwater resources, it is imiperative to keep a clear distinction lbtween stock and flotc dimension, Fln)un the stock viewpoint, groundwater
is probably resource in ain immense XianD p)arts of India. But, judged from

saline water fro1n the neighbourhood infiltrates the emptied space. This last danger exists in areas lying close to the sea or to the deserts which are underla-in with salin-e vaters. Suirprising- as it may sound, firm estimnates of (groundwvater potential of In India are lacking at the moment. 1960, Ragthav Rao employed indirect n-thodls of cstimation, in which rainf'all aind Soil percolation (quality were o-ised to assess groundwater recharge. Ie p lace d the gtroundwvaterpotential of Ii(dia at about 219 million acre-feet (26 bhm), wvith statewise breakup as fol-

low's:
Andhra Pradesh Assam region
Bihar

million acre-feet 17.2 16.7

21.9

the flow angle, it is a bountiful resoutrce in the eastern Gangetic plains some people quote approvonlv. Wkrhen ingly buit ouit of context an expert who night halve said that the volume of oyrouindwaterbelow the land surface of Uttar P)ralde.shis muich more than the volune of wvater flowing annually in and(I its tributaries, or that thie GCangres the w-ater underneath UP is equivalent to hundreds of Bhakra reservoirs, they are taking a stock or capital view of Btut when the groundwater resource. some coticerned lmvdrogeologists caution agailnst ovcerexploitation of groundwvater resource, they are taking a flow or 'safe yiel]l' view of grotundwater resource. can generate quite Thlle two views comntraryimapressions or reactions, unless one is oni the guard as to whether the stock or the flow view is implied. Let ith mle illustrate the point wN the help of a concrete exaMple. UP plainis are said to be underlain wN7ithalluiviail (leposits tupto a depth of 5 to 63 thiousaindlimietres at some places. Since it is these dieposits of sand and clavy Nwhich really yield groundwater,
0mm rmaitv say that,

I)elhi Gujarat Ilarvana I limachal Pradesh andl jamnnmnii Kashmir MP Kerala Tamil Nadio Maharashtra Karnataka hunjah Oirissa llajasthani UP West Beng,al All-India
Ever since

0.3 10.2 3.5 0.9 4.0 26.7 5.4 11.5 12.6 10.0 6.9 16.0 3.4 35.5 16.1 218.8
Rao's

196(0, it is Raghav

estiniates which are being (qluoted in many wNith somen( reservations official and(l semi-official (locuments, e g, the Report of the Second Irrigation
Commissioin

(1972).

the

Report

of

the

in

UP,

groundwater

occuirs impto a depth of 20,000 feet. Ilo(v.ever, the voluime of this underetroutndwater, as per cent of the volume of allluvial deposits, Nould be Ino more thaim 10 per cent - 15 to 20 per cent in the case of sandy aquifers and 3 to peArcdnt in the case of clayey aquifers. In terui-is of volumille, the stock of
grotindwater
milav

Task Force otn GroluIndwI7ater- Resoiurces 1972), etc. (Planningr Commission, I lowever, many states notably, Harvana. Ptnjnal) and UP -have expressed abotut these estiserious reserivations Thev helieve that direct memates. thlo(ds Jf (roulndlwlater estimation would vie ld hig,her estimates of grounjdwater )Potential. In fact, the Groundwater InDirectorate of Uttar Pravestigat ion balance' medlesh. tising the 'vater thod. pl1aced the utilisable groundwater potential of Uttar Pra,desh at 42.6 mnillioni acrc-feelt. 0io)0 acre-feet as comparedl to 35.5 milRaghav estimate(d by

be as miuch as 2,000

million hectare-metres (mhm) if we restrict ourselves to the top 1000 Even this iumetresof alluvial deposits. stt)ck of grouindw\7ater under the UP plaimnscoines to a figure which is over 30 times the estimated annual flow of 55 mhm of the enltire Ganges river

takinig a dynamic view Blao.toreover. of grIoundlwater poteintial, the Directorate raised this potential to 49 million -fmicnr ct. Jn this dynamic assessment, it took accouniit if additional canal irri itt,>n Ironi Gan(lak. IlRamiganga and which are Saor(l Sabl!ayak projects onleXr conlstruction. For. seepage from

A-19

Review of Agricuhtture March 1977 canals aiid canal-irrigated fields are, besicdes rainfall, an important source of groundwater recharge. As UttarPradesh harnesses more and more of its surface estimated at 180 water resources its utilisable groundmillion acre-feet w-ater potential should also rise further. it NWkhether wood( be as high as 140 million acre-feet, which the UP Irrigation Departmenit hopes to extract annually in order to support a crop intensitv of 240 per cent in the entire state, is hard to say without more detailed pertinent the Anyway, information. point is that groundwater potential is Consequently, esnot a static coincept. p-otential are timates of groundwater liable to upwvard revision as more and more irriaatedl agricuilture comes into
vogue.

ECONOMIC AND T here are, indeed, very many interesting questions relating to groundeconomics. ws-ater utilisation and its WVhatis the crop pattern of areas irrigated by groundwater sources, and how does it compare with the crop pattern in canal-irrigated areas, or dry areas? W/hat are the capital and operating costs of various groundwater structures - such as open wells, dug-cum-bore wells, and tubewells; and how does irrigation cost of a structure vary with the soturce of energy used? What are the internal scale economies in tubewell irrigation and how wouldl cost of tubewell irrigation compare with effective resoulrce cost of canal irrigation? What aie the external diseconomies of tubewvell irrigation? How vmutch of the utilsal)]( groundwater potential has been

POLITICAL

WEEKLY

tapped so far and what are the factors w hich have promoted or inhibited the exploitation of groundwater resources in various regions of India? In particular, what has been the contribution of land consolidaruiral electrification, institutions in the tion, and financial rapid expansion of modern groundwater irrigation like tubewells and wells fitted w ith powver pumps? Literature is gradually accumulating a-s scholars and investigators explore the above questions. A time is bound to conme, soon, when as much knowledge about groundwater irrigation would be available as is currently available about canal irrigation. At the moinent, it is difficult to present a worthwhile siummary viewv of answers about the above questions.

Wage

Rates

of

Two

Groups

of

Agricultural

Labourers
Manabendu Chattopadhyay Quite a numnberof studies have been done on the temporal and spatial variations in wage rates for casual hired agricultural labour. However, the importance of study of variations in wage rates for different categories of wage earners employed in agriculture is yet to receive adequate attention from social scientists. This paper tries to interpret variations in wages received by twvo types of purely ag,yricultural weage earners: (1) casual hircd labourers and (2) annual farmzservants.
I TI-IIS paper tries to interpret the by two va-riation in wvages received of' purely agricultural wage types earners: (i) The casual hired labour, and (ii) the annual farmn servant. We mnay not- Lhaltqtite a goodc number of studlies on the temporal and spatial for casual variations of wvage rates hiredl labour have been dlone in recent years [e g, Giri anld liao 1961; Krishnaji 1971; Sethuranman 1972; Jose 1973; Fonseca 1975: ete]. But the importance of the stuidy of var-iations in wage rates ftor vlifferenit categories of wZage earmers employed in agriculture is yet to draw the attentioni of the social scientists. .Mention, howXver, may be mande of the study of Bardhan (1973) wvhich exaamined the variation in wvage rates between viz, the twN7o wvage earning groups casuial hired labour, and the small farmer-ciumn-wage earner. The folloving are the types of ernpirical std(lies so far done on agrictltoiral wxagge issuies:

castual hiired labour [Rath and Joshi 1966; Bardhan 1970; Jose 1973; Fonseca 1975; etc]. (2) Seasonial variations of the wage lrates and/or its ielation to unemploynent in agrriculture [Giri and Rao 1961; Krishnaji 1971; Sethuraman 1972]. (3) Factors affecting the wage rates i or a(gricuiltuiral labourer [Bardhan, Kalpana 1973]. (4) Comnpar-ison of the wage rates I)etween two categories of vage earners -iz, earners vis-a-vis tlhe putre wN-age \va,ge earnecrs cornii smnall farmers [BarPranab 1973]. clIaCII, The gencral conicluision arrived at by the stu-idies uniider (1), above, is that the ag-ricultural development or green revoluttion has not b)e significantly helpful eni iN raising, thle agricuiltural wage rates in real terms. The studies under type 2 indicate fluictuiationis in the wage rate b)ctwNeenvariotus agricultural operations, hut such (lifferences betw;een agricultuThe ral nmonths are not so prominent.
sttduy uindler type 3 concludes that
"...

iii the wag, iicollice ... )ut also the agricultural for rate wage (lily [Bardhan, K 1975]. The lal)ourers" ''average cairninig per man-day for those as employees in other ho worked facrms was hligher for pure wage earners than for small farmers" [Bardhan, observation general 1) 1973], is the a(le by the latter study. These stuiclies (lo not give us a comprehensive picture ol the wage structuire in agriculture, and hence limit our But the imscope for generalisation. miiediate concern of this paper is not to Our purpose here is to take up that. dliscuss a newv category in the wage issuies which we think is important to inderstand the natLure and function of lahour market, with the agricultural special reference to the heterogeneous character of lahour.

II
In the agricultuiral labour market, there are three types of labourers wvhose major sources of income are wage earnings. We call these groups: (i) casual hired-labour group, (ii) annual

(1) ComI)parison l)et7 een the money wvage rate and the ieal wage rate for A-20

irrigation or mutltiple cropping does g(enerate a positivo response not only