Water diversion to urban areas affects irrigation - Farmers need to be consulted, protected and compensated - Article from The Hindu

Content Courtesy: The Hindu Business Line
Authors: A Narayanamoorthy, L Venkatachalam

This article dwells on the recent instances where water for irrigation purposes has been increasingly diverted to meet the needs of the gradually rising urban populations. The article argues that this has had a highly negative impact on the farmer's livelihoods and that the issue needs to be solved swiftly and  farmers need to be consulted, protected and compensated

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This article published in The Hindu Business Line highlights the killing of three innocent farmers by police in Maval of Pune district, Maharashtra where the farmers were agitating against the recent governmental plan to divert more water from Pavna dam situated close to Pune city to Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, which is one of the richest municipal corporations in India.

The article argues that the issue raised by the farmers is genuine, has a larger context and not specific to Pavna dam alone. Rapid urbanisation, along with changing lifestyle of the masses has put enormous pressure on the government to augment water supply for urban use. A large quantity of water originally allotted for irrigation is thus being increasingly diverted to non-irrigation purposes without consulting farmers who are entitled to its use.
 
This has reduced the overall availability of irrigation water, resulting in reduction in the area irrigated. Farmers living at the tail-end of command areas have being bearing the brunt of this diversion of water as they do not have any livelihood opportunities other than crop cultivation. The increased diversion of canal water for domestic and other purposes has also slowed down the expansion of canal irrigation in India, especially since mid-nineties.

This has also given rise to water conflicts where in the absence of reliable water sources for non-irrigation purposes, states are trying to ‘steal' the water from the dams and tanks which are originally constructed for the irrigation purposes. Given the fast decline of unutilised irrigation water potential and increased competition for irrigation water from non-agricultural sectors, there is every possibility that farmers' agitations and their conflicts with the governments would aggravate in the future, argues the article.

The article ends by making some suggestions to deal with the situation:

• Since the ability to pay is high among the city dwellers, water price needs to be increased substantially to improve efficiency and also to compensate the farmers who have lost their livelihood opportunities because of diversion of irrigation water.
• There is a need to enact a proper water acquisition (diversion) policy to protect the farmers, on the lines of the land acquisition policy.
• The Government should also initiate proper ‘water accounting' at all river basins to find out actual water use by different sectors.
• Water diversion from agriculture to urban areas should have in-built mechanisms to compensate the farmers adequately.

The entire article can be accessed from this link: