Shilp Verma

Article by: Sakshi Saini and Paresh B Shirsath

With small and fragmented land holdings, owning a well and pump is not a viable option for all farmers.

India is fortunate to have a rich tradition of public data collection and compilation.

Solar energy, which was until now only considered for small scale lighting is now slowly gaining tremendous popularity among farmers to pump irrigation water. The paper titled 'Karnataka’s smart, new solar pump policy for irrigation' published in the

IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program (ITP), a project that focusses on policy research in the co-management of energy & groundwater, has been awarded the 2014 UN ‘Water for life’ award!

India is the world's largest consumer of groundwater where it is extensively used for irrigation. However, there is a considerable waste of this valuable resource. While a part of this waste can be attributed to a lack of incentive for conservation, unmetered electricity supply contributes greatly to this problem. This has led to the formation of what is being termed an energy-irrigation nexus.

Several sessions at the IWMI-Tata Annual Partners' Meet in 2012 discussed this phenomenon, its causes, impact and possible management strategies. 

A month ago, India Water Portal tried to make sense of the numbers involved in India's flagship programme. Two-thirds of the works in progress in the current financial year (2012-13) were devoted to works linked with water - split nearly equally between water for domestic use and water for livelihoods.