Veeranna* and Sabanna* are both farmers who own small landholdings of less than a hectare in neighbouring panchayats in north Karnataka’s Raichur district. Their circumstances are both alike and markedly different because of a canal that weaves through the district.
Veeranna is more fortunate. He is able to cultivate paddy, which fetches a good price and is buttressed by a Minimum Support Price (MSP) safety net. Veeranna is also free from the brief monsoonal window, when there is enough rain to sustain crops. He thus has the potential to earn much more than Sabanna, a rain-fed farmer who struggles with access to water in a drought-prone district like Raichur even to quench the dry-land crops he cultivates.
This contrast can be attributed to the fact that Veeranna is a ‘head-end’ farmer (located closest to the source of water), while Sabanna works at the tail-end (farthest away) of the Narayanpur Right Bank Canal (NRBC). This canal is a crucial part of the Upper Krishna irrigation project, a mammoth system of water supply infrastructure, designed in the post-Independence years to supply water from the Krishna river, one of the largest that traverses peninsular India, to parched regions in Karnataka. Back in 1972, an Irrigation Commission report said that the largest swathe of drought-prone land in India lies in the state of Karnataka.
Representative image of a person working on a paddy field. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Meera’rah CC BY-SA 4.0.
The NRBC is clearly an important offshoot, bringing water from afar and helping farmers in this arid plateau prosper and even grow paddy, a water-intensive crop. But the adverse effects of inefficient canal water management are becoming increasingly evident. These inefficiencies are fuelling disparities in farmer well-being and worsening the extent and severity of land degradation in the whole region. The water surplus and inability to store it for later compels head-end farmers to cultivate only paddy, a trend that will bring down agricultural productivity and affect irrigated farmers like Veeranna as well.
There are many factors that drive land degradation across the country. In the context of the NRBC canal command area, i.e. the land that benefits from the water supplied through a canal system, it is apparent that ensuring more equitable distribution of canal water is an important lever in arresting land degradation, restoring soil quality and improving farmer incomes over the long term.
Who gets to use the water surplus?
Water for agriculture remains an essential, limited, and strained resource for the majority of smallholder farmers – about 70% of Raichur’s population depends on agriculture and related activities for their sustenance. Raichur’s net sown area is 4,750 square kilometres, of which only 33% is irrigated. Since 2014, the district has faced erratic and decreasing rainfall.
With less than 750 mm annual rainfall, Raichur falls within the 33% of areas in the country classified as chronically drought-prone.
The irony of Raichur district facing such severe drought conditions while sandwiched between the Krishna river and its tributary, the Tungabhadra, turned into an opportunity to discipline and divert water via multiple irrigation projects, primarily through government funding. Around 43% of the Krishna river basin area (2,58,948 km2) is part of Karnataka and covers all of Raichur district, according to ministry of water resources data from 2014.
Over the past few decades, aided by two irrigation projects – the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal and Narayanapura Right Bank Canal – Raichur has come to be known as the ‘rice bowl’ of Karnataka. To reiterate, Raichur is not an outlier in this regard. Historian Sunil Amrith wrote in Unruly Waters that artificial irrigation sparked an ‘agricultural boom’ in the drier regions of India’s west and south. He also notes, ‘In both the boom regions and those left behind, the control of water as well as the control of credit concentrated land in fewer hands.’
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As in the case of many other parts of the country where canal infrastructure became available, farmers were incentivised to quickly switch to one or two water-intensive crops, heavily relying on synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. The most notable example of this are the states of Punjab and Haryana. With canal irrigation, farmers there started growing rice, abandoning the crops they had traditionally grown, such as millets, even though the latter were more suited to the limited rainfall the region receives. A whole ecosystem of measures further enabled this shift to mono-cropping — subsidies, easy availability of seeds, guaranteed procurement, free power for irrigation, — and has kept it in place despite growing concerns about its environmental impacts. Similar trends have emerged in Raichur.
These projects were intended to shield farmers from drought, crop loss and ensure that they have enough water to support the dry-land and horticultural crops they grew. However, after a few farmers started switching to monocultures of paddy, there simply wasn’t enough left water for everyone to cultivate this water-intensive crop. As we illustrated through Veeranna and Sabanna’s stories, farmers near the dam, known as ‘head-end farmers,’ capture most of the water, leaving those further downstream, or ‘tail-end farmers,’ with inadequate water supply.
While mechanisms and infrastructure for equitable water distribution were not properly established, the farmers also tend to have a ‘use it or lose it’ mindset. They sometimes overuse water, without intending to, because they cannot save it for later. Farmers don’t have control over gates and how much water reaches their fields. Water is made available by flooding fields via feeder channels, and current regulations prohibit storing it locally for use in the dry season.
Despite the potential for farmers to earn 2-5 times more with 30-50% less water, they remain stuck in a low-level equilibrium of growing a single paddy crop due to the flooding irrigation regime. This could be avoided if water was delivered in a more organised manner, allowing for the cultivation of two high-value crops instead.
Unsustainable land management practices
Improper water management in many canal-irrigated areas has caused problems such as waterlogging and soil salinity. These changes have reduced soil fertility, decreased crop productivity and turned large swathes of land barren. Approximately 8.40 million hectares of land in the country has been degraded due to water-logging and soil salinity issues and that it will cost well over Rs 800 million to drain and reclaim such ‘lost’ land in the Upper Krishna Project area alone.
A study carried out in Odisha observed excessive water at the head of channels and limited water at the tail end. Another found insufficient water available for paddy cultivation in the middle and tail reaches of the Eastern Yamuna Canal during the kharif season, prompting farmers to switch to sorghum
Conveyance efficiencies of 43-44% suggest potential for increasing water availability by addressing seepage and evaporation losses.
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Apart from impairing land and water productivity, monoculture paddy cultivation also contributes to global heating through methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions.
Shifting from conventional monoculture to low-input polyculture with water-efficient dry-land crops like pulses, millets and oil seeds could benefit both the farmer and the environment. Despite these benefits, this transition is not happening because there are barriers that need to be addressed first.
Barriers in the shift from mono-cropping
Community involvement is crucial to implementing transparent water management systems in regions riven with unequal water access and control. Grassroots NGOs like Prarambha have been conducting meetings and group discussions with farmers in the region to understand their concerns. They have found that a majority of them are willing to shift from paddy monoculture to diversified cropping systems if there is increased control and better management of canal water. There is a need for a comprehensive set of solutions that address water management, ease of labour requirement and market availability.
Civil society involvement and better funding
Farmers voiced concerns about lack of control of gates, water seepage, poor maintenance and the perceived helplessness of irrigation officials, prompting demands for reforms at institutional, policy and infrastructure levels. Significant obstacles hinder the formation of Water User Cooperative Societies (WUCs), primarily due to limited funding for grassroots institutions.
The involvement of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) is crucial in facilitating water-sharing arrangements and enhancing interactions between farmers and officials. Moreover, while government funding focuses on canal infrastructure and philanthropic efforts prioritise physical assets like farm ponds, the creation of social capital such as WUCs is often overlooked. Mobilising long-term community involvement remains underfunded, posing a barrier to promoting equitable water distribution.
Diversified crop systems
While mechanisation is well-developed in mono-cropping systems like paddy, the tools are often rudimentary for a diversified cropping system. Additionally, eliminating pesticides and herbicides typically necessitates manual weeding. Another challenge with diversified systems is that different crops must also be harvested at varying times. As a result, these systems are inherently labour-intensive, with the burden usually falling on women. Ensuring labour productivity and dignified wages should be fundamental conditions in this transition.
A well-established market ecosystem
Resistance to change is further reinforced by a well-established market ecosystem favouring paddy cultivation. Factors like market access, finance, and existing value chain infrastructure, along with public procurement practices, sustain this resistance. The influence of input vendors, traders, and moneylenders further limits farmers’ crop choices, especially in areas like Raichur with limited urban market access.
The way forward
For one, there is no need to abandon paddy altogether. There are ways to simultaneously improve water efficiency in paddy cultivation while allowing protective irrigation for diverse crops. In other words, the possibility of an additional agricultural season could incentivise paddy farmers to adopt more water-efficient cultivation practices – such as direct seeding of rice – in the kharif season.
Representative image. Photo: Manjunatha G.
Innovative technological solutions for labour as well as supply- and demand-side water management are also crucial to consider. High-tech options like automated irrigation infrastructure increase control and transparency, while low-tech solutions such as modelling tools and real-time monitoring through sensors can help farmers make informed decisions without sacrificing income. Integration of custom hiring centres for labour-saving technologies and labour groups could address the need for additional labour to an extent.
As highlighted above, decentralised water-user groups need to be established and empowered to democratise control over this essential resource. Certain design principles must be adopted to make the water user groups socially inclusive. The involvement of dedicated market players in creating value chains and sustainable markets is also essential to secure fair prices for a variety of crops.
Finally, blended financing opportunities shared by governments, philanthropic organisations, and civil society groups can leverage existing financial resources and align them with specific needs, fuelling the transition to sustainable agriculture.
There is enough water for both Veeranna and Sabanna to switch to agricultural practices that would improve their income, while sustaining natural resources. But this is possible only if we fix the inequities and inefficiencies plaguing water management, and create an ecosystem of solutions that promote more sustainable and productive agricultural transitions.
Syamkrishnan P. Aryan is a Programme Manager with the Rural Futures programme at Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs, a research and innovation centre based in Bengaluru.
Ashima Chaudhary is the Managing Partner of the Rural Futures programme.
With inputs from Karishma Shelar, former Senior Programme Manager with WELL Labs, and Dr Veena Srinivasan, Executive Director of WELL Labs. The authors also credit Prarambha, an NGO based in the region for spearheading the work on the ground.