A new book examines the groundwater crisis – and its politics

The large-scale development of irrigation in Gujarat, as in the rest of the country, began after 1951 – the year when planned development in India was initiated. Prior to 1951, the use of groundwater for irrigated agriculture accounted for around 25 per cent of the total groundwater resources harnessed at that time in the country. At the beginning of the planning era, the full potential of underground aquifers was not known. The availability of pumping equipment and the energy needed to operate them were also restricted.

However, once the realisation came that groundwater was a very cheap and “efficient” alternative to major and medium irrigation works, the exploitation of groundwater began at an accelerated pace. The comparative advantage of groundwater over other sources of irrigation is well described by BB Vohra:

Groundwater requires no expenditure for storage and transport and can be harnessed by the farmer with his own efforts – except possibly for a short-term loan – within a matter of weeks if not actually days and can therefore be developed through the efforts of millions of private individuals on an infinitely wider decentralized front and practically in all parts of the country within a far shorter period of time than surface water. It also involves no environmental problems such as the submergence of good lands under storage and canals, and no evaporation and seepage losses which take away more than 50 per cent of the water released from reservoirs before they reach the farmers’ fields. It also creates no problem of waterlogging. Above all, it is a resource entirely under the farmer’s control and requires no huge and corrupt bureaucracies before it can be put to work. It can thus be applied exactly when and to the extent required by the crop or land…

Irrigation facilities expanded at a frantic pace in Gujarat in the later decades of the 20th century. Between 1960-61 and 1984-85, the percentage of gross area irrigated to gross area sown nearly quadrupled. And while the area irrigated by wells slightly declined over time in proportionate terms – mainly due to the expansion of canal irrigation, wells remained the main source of irrigation throughout this period.

At the same time, a dramatic change took place within the “wells” category. In earlier times, irrigation through wells meant the use of kos and similar water-lifting devices, manually operated with the aid of bullocks. Later, however, well irrigation began to involve energized water extraction mechanisms such as electric tube wells and diesel pump sets. Thus, the dug wells or open wells of the 1960s increasingly gave way to the tube wells of the 1970s and 1980s. The dramatic increase in the area irrigated from the 1950s was largely due to the rapid expansion of these modern water extraction mechanisms. The number of these modern wells in Gujarat grew at a phenomenal rate, while that of dug wells comparatively stagnated. The overexploitation of groundwater in Gujarat has been closely related to these trends.

The role of electrification

The massive expansion of modern water extraction devices was partly due to the official promotion of groundwater exploitation, beginning with the Grow More Food campaign launched in 1953 at an all-India level. Another important factor was the electrification of villages, which led to the rapid energization of pump sets and tube wells. Electrification was particularly rapid in Gujarat. While in 1960-61, only 823 villages were electrified, by 1985-86 this figure had shot up to 17,053 (out of a total of 18,114 villages). A large increase was also observed in the number of pump sets and tube wells that were electrified: from 5,401 in 1960-61 to 3,17,403 in 1985-86. In other words, within this 25-year period, there was almost a sixty-fold increase in the number of electrified pump sets and tube wells in Gujarat.

For diesel pump sets, steady growth can be observed until 1976. After that, the rate of growth seems to have slowed down. At the field level, one observed that many of these pump sets were not in use. Sometimes, this was because the dug well on which a pump set was installed had little or no water and the owner did not have the capacity to deepen his dug well or to get an in-well bore drilled. But, in some areas, it was also the result of a switch from diesel to electricity, the latter being a cheaper source of energy.

Interestingly, the largest proportionate increase (340 per cent) in the number of electrified pump sets and tube wells over a period of five years occurred in 1966-71. The late 1960s was the period when the Green Revolution was gaining a foothold in Gujarat. It was also a period of frequent drought conditions – drought was declared in all the districts of Gujarat in 1965-66, and in 16 out of 19 districts in 1968-69. The expansion of electrified pump sets and tube wells was also rapid during the drought of 1985-88. Describing the uneven impact of these structures on subsistence farmers and prosperous farmers in times of drought, Bandyopadhyay (1987) rightly states:

While drought is getting mitigated for the farmers growing cash crops, energized pump sets are creating new drought for marginal and poor peasants by drawing down the water table to below their reach.

Private profits and government subsidies

What were the reasons for the proliferation of pump sets in general and of electric pump sets in particular? An obvious factor was that within the prevailing structure of incentives and property rights, energised water extraction mechanisms represented a far more lucrative technology than dug wells in most environments.

The profitability of investment in tube wells was greatly enhanced by various government policies. These included highly subsidized electricity pricing and liberal financial assistance. Liberal provision of subsidized credit in agriculture began with the Five-Year Plans. After the formation of the state of Gujarat in 1960, agricultural credit was mainly provided through the agency of the Gujarat State Cooperative Land Development Bank. By the late 1980s, most of the credit extended by the Land Development Bank was allocated to investment in modern water extraction devices. A large share of the credit channelled through later institutions and schemes such as NABARD and the Integrated Rural Development Programme also supported such investments, especially during and after the drought years. In the absence of government support in these and other forms, the profitability of modern water extraction devices would have been greatly reduced.

Overexploitation and inequity

The depletion of groundwater resources in Gujarat must be seen in the context of a larger environmental crisis. It not only means that traditional wells dry up and that drinking water must be fetched over longer and longer distances. It also means a dangerous and possibly irreversible disruption of the “hydrological cycle”.

As we saw, a major cause of this disastrous trend is the overexploitation of groundwater. The expansion of modern water extraction devices is one aspect of the gradual transformation of Indian agriculture – beginning with the “Green Revolution” – towards more intensive cropping patterns and practices. The adverse consequences of this transformation on the environment must be seriously considered, along with any possible gains that could be realized through increases in productivity or employment.

Aside from this problem of overexploitation, growing inequity in groundwater use is both a critical consequence and a major cause of overexploitation. This growing inequity compounds earlier economic inequalities based on land ownership, with the result that the agricultural community in Gujarat is increasingly sharply divided between a minority of prosperous farmers who monopolize most of the land and water and a majority of small farmers and agricultural labourers who are increasingly alienated from both of these means of production.

Inequity and overexploitation are, thus, twin aspects of the groundwater crisis in Gujarat, ultimately inseparable insofar as their common cause lies in the anti-social appropriation of groundwater by a minority of large farmers. They can be seen as two sides of the same coin.