Real-time co-management of electricity and groundwater: an assessment of Gujarat’s pioneering Jyotirgram Scheme

Tube well irrigationWellsPumpsElectrificationFarmers attitudesShare croppingPovertyUser chargesRural economy

Electricity reforms and their impact on ground water use in states of Gujarat, West Bengal and Uttarakhand, India

Indian policy discourse on the most suitable form of agricultural electricity tariff has come full circle. Until the early 1970s, all state electricity boards (SEBs) charged their tubewell owners based on metered consumption, but, due to a whole range of administrative issues, this was later changed to a flat tariff in the early 1980s. However, the flat tariffs remained low over the years and the SEBs started making large losses. Low flat tariffs also led to the over-exploitation of groundwater in arid and semi-arid states of India. Therefore, recently, there has been a renewed interest in reforming the electricity sector. This has been triggered by the poor financial status of most SEBs. The main element of electricity sector reform has been the unbundling of services – that is, the separation of the electricity generation, transmission and distribution functions and the universal metering of all consumers. Almost 50% of India’s pumps depend on electricity for pumping groundwater and hence, reforms in this sector profoundly affect the groundwater sector

Addressing India’s water challenge 2050: the virtual water trade option

The Government of India, on directions from the Supreme Court in 2002 and advice from the National Water Development Agency (NWDA), proposed an estimated US$120 billion National River Linking Project (NRLP) which envisages linking 37 Himalayan and Peninsular rivers (Figure 1; NCIWRD 1999). Doing this will form a gigantic South Asian water grid which will annually handle 178×109 m3/yr of interbasin water transfer; build 12,500 km of canals; generate 34 gigawatts of hydropower; add 35 million hectares (Mha) to India’s irrigated areas; and generate inland navigation benefits (IWMI 2003; NWDA 2006; Gupta and van der Zaag 2007)

Going against the flow: A critical analysis of virtual water trade in the context of India's National River Linking Programme

Virtual water trade has been promoted as a tool to address national and regional water scarcity. In the context of international (food) trade, this concept has been applied with a view to optimize the flow of commodities considering the water endowments of nations. The concept states that water-rich countries should produce and export water intensive commodities (which indirectly carry embedded water needed for producing them) to water-scarce countries, thereby enabling the water-scarce countries to divert their precious water resources to alternative, higher productivity uses.\ud While progress has been made on quantifying virtual water flows between countries, there exists little information on virtual water trade within large countries like India. This report quantifies and critically analyzes inter-state virtual water flows in India in the context of a large inter-basin transfer plan of the Government of India.\ud Our analysis shows that the existing pattern of inter-state virtual water trade is exacerbating scarcities in already water scarce states and that rather than being dictated by water endowments, virtual water flows are influenced by other factors such as "per capita gross cropped area" and "access to secured markets". We therefore argue that in order to have a comprehensive understanding of virtual water trade, non-water factors of production need to be taken into consideration

Solar power as remunerative crop

Anand, the small Gujarat town that gave India its dairy cooperave movement, has now spawned a new cooperave that may well grow into a genre of its own. The Dhundi Solar Pump Irrigators' Cooperave Enterprise (SPICE) provides the proof of concept for promong Solar Power as a Remunerave Crop (SPaRC). We argue that SPaRC presents the best chance of taming western India's groundwater anarchy, of improving the finances of power distribuon companies, of curtailing the carbon footprint of our agriculture and of creang a new, risk-free source of serious cash income for India's farmers

Promoting solar irrigation service providers in Ganga basin: jobs, affordable irrigation and accelerated green revolution

The plains of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin, encompassing Bangladesh, Nepal terai and eastern India, are home to a quarter of the world’s rural poor. The basin’s copious aquifers are the biggest hope for millions of smallholders locked into unviable agriculture. Studies suggest shallow groundwater wells can support 2.5 crops/year in much of the basin without threat of depletion. Yet, cropping intensities hover around 1.2- 1.5 in most parts. Rapid expansion in shallow tubewell irrigation has begun to show productivity improvement for tubewell owners, but marginal farmers and tenants remain in a disadvantageous position in this tubewell irrigation economy