Irrigation water management for food security in India: The forgotten realities - Paper by IRAP

In this paper, the authors examine the current debates around India's water crisis and its implications for food security in the country. The paper takes a critical look at the recent official assessments of groundwater exploitation in India in the context of these debates.

The paper proposes that there is a need to make a qualitative assessment of the magnitude of food security and water management challenges facing the country. It argues that two important factors drive the agricultural growth and food production in India. These include access and availability of arable land and water resources, which need to be examined and analysed with particular reference to their regional variations, to get a true understanding of the situation.

Regional variations in terms of arable land and water resources indicate that some of the regions in the country with natural water shortage are the ones that have very high levels of land under agriculture and are high performers in terms of food production. This leads to an increase in demand for water and the consequent exploitation of ground water resources in these regions.

At the same time, the regions that have abundant water resources are the ones that have less availability of arable land for agricultural use, leading to low demand on ground water resources. These regions are the ones that are low performers in terms of food production.

The paper argues that rather than having uniform blanket policies that mask the differences between regions, the challenge lies in designing strategies that can make maximum use of the resources available in different regions, while preventing the exploitation of the resources that are already under strain.

The paper concludes that it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of these regional imbalances in the country and strategies need to be designed based of different needs, strengths and priorities of each these regions to deal with the water crisis and food security issues in the country.

Download the paper from the IRAP website.