Case5-April-2012
Water and Poverty has a close nexus. Poverty is in general a complex, multi-dimensional issue challenging the growth and development of underprivileged across the world, most particularly in the developing nations like India. Within the on-going debate over water and poverty nexus, the agricultural water holds an important place. While the solutions to many dimensions of water and poverty problems such as livelihoods and food security comprising sanitation, hygiene, access to safe and potable water supplies calls for increased expansion of services, the agricultural water/ green water problems requires significant improvements in the existing services through favourable policy interventions.
Access to irrigation infrastructure for the poor people allows them to enhance their production and income and broaden the opportunities to diversify their income base, reducing the vulnerability caused by the seasonality amidst the threats of climate change, Thus, creating a favourable mechanism or system that provides opportunity for the poor peasants to rebuild and renovate the irrigation infrastructures to serve the needs of their marginal farm holding has the potential to contribute to poverty reduction and the movement of people from ill-being to well- being.
India, a South Asian democratic country, has many historical evidences on irrigation structures, systems and management, almost from 8th century A.D onwards. They captured India’s long history of human interventions in the management of village water bodies for agriculture. One such intervention, is an irrigation tank. A tank is a simple earthen banked rainwater harvesting and storage structure, designed by the early settlers using their indigenous wisdom and constructed with the generous support of native rulers and chieftains over the past several centuries. Surprisingly these earthen structures have withstood the test of time and survived over many centuries. They are simple technological innovations developed by those people to accommodate their primary needs and adapted to the distinctive Indian climate – intense monsoons followed by protracted droughts.
Sir Arthur Cotton, a well-known British Engineer who worked in India at the time of Colonial imperialism exclaimed on seeing the constructed tanks:
“The natives have constructed tens of thousands of tanks in almost every kind of soil with earthen bund without the puddle bank, which English Engineers fancied necessary”.
John Ambler (1994) aptly describes the usefulness of tank systems as follows:
“Tanks need to be thought of in terms of a wide complex of natural resources, physical facilities, land use patterns and managerial institutions. The tank is not simply an irrigation system that starts from the reservoir down. It is also a collection point for run-off from the catchment area, pond for pisciculture, source of silt for fertilization and construction material, a recharge structure for local groundwater, a location for cultivation on common lands, a source of drinking water for livestock, and finally, an irrigation system for crops. To help keep in mind this multiplicity of uses which spans the administrative ambit of several government departments, it is useful to think of tank complexes rather than tanks, which too often connote only the direct surface irrigation aspects of these systems.”
The tank system has four different functions in irrigated agriculture: soil and water conservation, flood control, drought mitigation and protection of environment of surrounding area. Likewise, development of tank irrigation has to undergo the four phases, namely, water acquisition or harvesting, storage, disposal of surplus water, distribution and management of water in the command area by an institution. The tank complex comprises the catchment area, the feeder channel, tank bund, water spread area, sluice outlets, command area, field distributaries (water courses) and surplus weir.
The tank system has four different functions in irrigated agriculture: soil and water conservation, flood control, drought mitigation and protection of environment of surrounding area. Likewise, development of tank irrigation has to undergo the four phases, namely, water acquisition or harvesting, storage, disposal of surplus water, distribution and management of water in the command area by an institution. The tank complex comprises the catchment area, the feeder channel, tank bund, water spread area, sluice outlets, command area, field distributaries (water courses) and surplus weir.
While the South and East Indian tanks are known for their antiquity and are created essentially as a source for providing supplementary irrigation during monsoon season, innumerable small water holding structures called ponds have been in existence in many North Indian states and some were constructed even after Independence for multiple uses including irrigated agriculture. Although many of these ponds are primarily meant for inland fresh water aquaculture, they have also been used for multiple purposes like irrigated agriculture, livestock and other domestic uses. Tank irrigation has thus a rich heritage on account of long historical antecedents in various regions of India. Over centuries, tanks and ponds constituted an important supplementary source of water to the distressed poor.
The advantage of tank irrigation is its proximity to the command area, so that the water requirement of the crop can be assessed and supplied from the tank, which is the core issue of water management. Most of the small tanks serve one single village and its hamlets, enabling the de-centralized management to be effective.
Despite the fact of having higher irrigation efficiency and equitable water distribution for ensuring food security, compared with canal and well irrigation systems, the net area irrigated by tanks dwindled from 34.68 million ha during 1952 to 29.16 million ha during 2000. More-over, the productivity from tank irrigation command has also decreased.
In global context of achieving Millennium Development Goal and its indicator on environmental sustainability (Goal-7 , Target 9 and Target 10), it necessitates and warrants that all stakeholders, primarily the people should spearhead the mission to conserve as well as protect the treasures of rural small water resources like tanks and ponds by revitalizing them with community investment and building the ownership.
DHAN Foundation has initiated a water thematic programme as a small pilot in Madurai district viz.
Vayalagam Tankfed Agriculture Development Programme way back during 1992 with aim of stake building of people over the precious traditional water commons viz. tanks and ponds located in varied ecosystems by promoting social capital and community investments for revitalizing the irrigation assets. In its two decades of evolution, a community governed institutional framework was evolved and ensured sustainable food security interventions based on the community needs under a development branding “ Vayalagam”
The program has a number of components that are necessary to ensure that the interventions are sustainable in the long term. The measures that are proposed in rehabilitation/revitalization of tanks comprise improvements not only to the physical works but also the software aspects like operation, maintenance and management of water resources. They comprise the following:
The tank irrigation systems taken up for rehabilitation are spread over the four states of South India viz.Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Pondicherry and the two states of East India Orissa and Bihar. The tanks /Ahar-pynes are selected based on the scope for working with the marginal communities whose livelihoods and food security dependent entirely on tankfed agriculture. The villages and tanks are identified in such a way that cascades of tanks are selected and all the tanks in each cascade are improved in a phased manner based on the following criteria:
DHAN Foundation facilitated a three tier system of community participation.
Tank rehabilitation includes not only restoring the physical structures to their originally designed standard, but more importantly, facilitating the proper maintenance, efficient water management and improved cropping practices in a sustained manner.
The people’s felt needs and priorities are given importance in formulating detailed work plans and cost estimates, as the planning itself is done with people’s involvement. The works included in the tank rehabilitation follow an order of priority, which the users perceive as most important.
DHAN Foundation empowered the Community ownership building and stake by making them to invest around 20-30% cost of rehabilitation and the rest of the share was mobilized primarily from the government through the schemes that were in vogue in different periods of time. The funding partners of DHAN Foundation also at-times supported investments in revitalizing the village water assets to demonstrate as an entry point programme to sensitize the stakeholders to participate. After the new millennium, the Corporate firms too show keen interest in partnering with DHAN Foundation in rebuilding the village water assets to meet the food security needs of the poor farmers and landless people.
The agriculture is the main livelihoods of over 70% population in India. The secured food production from the cultivable lands largely depend on assured irrigation sources and the contribution of monsoon rains to monsoon dependent agriculture. In Indian context, the agriculture could be classified largely based on the sources of irrigation.
As an agricultural system, Tank fed Agriculture is distinct in cropping practices, varieties and water management. As a social system the tank serves and benefits various sections of the village community such as farmers, fisher folks, artisans, animal rearers and especially women. Even though the tanks are individually small in size as a water storage system, collectively their large number facilitates the absorption of seasonal floods and supply of the stored rainwater to crops during water scarcity periods. In short, tanks serve as flood moderators and drought mitigators.
The productivity in tank fed areas is more because of the indigenous crop cultivation practices and the indigenous/traditional varieties. Due to less amount of water available for cultivation, proper water management practices like conjunctive use of surface and ground water and appointing Neerkattis for equitable distribution of water are followed. In some villages, people form tank associations in order to maintain the tanks and its structures.
DHAN Foundation propose the conceptual solution package for the issues of Water and Food security in tank intensive states in India based on its grassroots learning by promoting Vayalagam Nested institutions and revitalizing irrigation commons in different eco systems in South India and East India.
In states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jarkhand, Orissa and part of Andhra Pradesh, there are untapped potential available to help the underprivileged farming community to adopt lift irrigation schemes across all surface water resources which go unutilized at present.
The solution package varies with respect to area and context. Even though the country is divided into many agro-climatic regions, the schemes so far implemented by the government were taken up with common approach. For instance, the coastal and tribal context need different solutions compared to conventional rural, semi-urban contexts.
Coastal Agriculture: Coastal agriculture is the term never got attraction among the Scientists. India having the longest coastline in South Asia has got great opportunity to invest on promoting coastal agriculture with salt tolerant varieties of crops and also revitalize the mangrove plantation. This in turn would minimize the exploitation of sea based bio-diversity by inland farmers as the wage labourers going for fishing.
Tribal Area Context: Tribal areas in the Country are endowed with great amount of natural resources with lesser utilization. This is because of high level of illiteracy and reluctance of government machineries and schemes reaching them. There is a huge exploitation of tribals by the traders in marketing the minor forest produce and purchasing the fertile lands at cheaper prices.
The solution packages have to be complimented with the supporting mechanisms like Institutional Credit access without much of paper works and collaterals, Affordable crop insurance to cover the weather based risks and emergence of Action Research programmes by the agricultural and allied research institutions based on farmers’ need. The role of NGOs and Voluntary Organisations have to be integrated as an integral part of facilitating these supporting mechanisms to the farmers with the agencies concerned and working on developing successful models for different contexts.
The agriculture extension services should be the most important component for achieving the objective of the topic. Yet, the present agricultural extension services of the government remain either inadequate or ineffective. Therefore the government must look into promotion of effective extension services by involving People, NGOs, Agricultural Universities / Research Stations and Media. It is well known that the All India Radio played an important role in the first green revolution. So, we propose the following action plans for consideration.
The farming system has undergone many changes over the years. It is not possible to stick to a single and straight jacket approach in evolving techniques to suit the needs of the farmers. Hither too, adopting policy on focusing the enhancement of dynamic farming systems becomes critical in getting expected results.
Farm Ponds, Organic farming, Contract Farming, SRI methods are the buzz words in the modern agriculture towards economizing the water use for crop production.
To conclude, the government always make very good plans, but they get diluted while implementation and monitoring. The involvement of farming community from the planning to action and sustaining the initiatives are very essential in present days. A multi-stakeholder approach (Community, NGO, Academia/Research Institutions, Financial institutions, Government) is always needed to make the implementable action plans a resounding success. Above all, the action plan should be in such a way that the farming should be made remunerative so that the farmers could gain confidence in adopting the techniques and technologies recommended by the government with greater accountability attached to the government.