Irrigation

In this article published in Commodity Vision, the author presents the concept of the establishment of a 'futures market in water availability' in the context of the risk of water availability that Indian agriculture has been facing in the recent years.

With South Asian agriculture being dependent on the timely occurrence of the monsoons, any deviation from the scheduled arrival of the monsoon causes problems not only for the farmers, but also produces a threat to the food security of the region. However, the author argues that, there is no market in South Asia where users and investors exposed to water availability risk can effectively hedge against such a risk.

This paper by the World Resources Institute outlines potential water-related risks facing the mining industry and highlights important gaps in water-related disclosure. The purpose is to provide information, questions, and tools to help the financial community better evaluate water-related risks facing mining companies.

This working paper by the University of Bonn attempts to give a spatial and temporal overview of water management in India. It traces how people and the successive regimes made choices across space and time from a wide range of water control and distribution technologies. The paper divides the water management in India into four periods –

• the traditional system of water management before colonial times;
• response from the colonial rulers to manage the complex socio-ecological system;
• large scale surface water development after independence; and
• finally, the small-scale community and market-led revolution.

This work on water footprint assessments represents a pioneering effort on documenting the water consumption in Jain Irrigation Systems Limited’s (JISL) production of dehydrated onions and of micro-irrigation systems. It also assesses the sustainability of this water consumption and formulate response strategies. 

This report on farmers’ experiences on System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in India by ICRISAT and WWF is an effort to compile the experiences of those farmers who pioneered the SRI method in various regions. They experimented in their own way, articulating their point of view on the method. 

The SRI is a national phenomenon in India and rice-cultivating farmers, particularly those who have less than one hectare of land, have experimented, refined, adopted and are promoting SRI. It is their hard work and trust that has spread this unknown method into all rice-growing states. Out of 564 rice-growing districts in India, SRI is being practiced by the farmers in about 216 districts.

I would like to share about Mr. Veerabhadrappa and his wife Ms. Sumangalamma who are doing number of experiments in agriculture in 80 acres of their land located in Bijekere village, Molakalmur Taluk, Chitradurga, district of Karnataka state. The farm is located 120 kms from Anantapur and 65 kms from Bellary, on the Bellary – Bangalore High way and just 30 kms from our field office at Rayadurg.

This paper from the recommended documentation section of the  Solution Exchange for the Water Community Discussion Summary on the preparation of the strategic plan for rural drinking water by the Department of Drinking Water Supply, Ministry of Rural Development, is directed at stakeholders, planners, managers and consumers.

The paper argues on the importance of water conservation in the context of the increasing water shortages that the country has been facing in recent years because of expansion of irrigated areas and rapid industrialisation.

The article argues that water conservation practices need to be encouraged and improved through research, effective regulations, information dissemination and incentives to the end user and more emphasis needs to be placed on adequate coverage, quality monitoring and collection of field level data. 

In partnership with the Columbia Water Center, researchers from Punjab Agricultural University have initiated a multi-year project to implement and field-test diverse water-saving technologies, practices and policies aimed at reducing agricultural water use in the state of Punjab, particularly among rice farmers. In last year’s trial, the most successful project involved the installation of inexpensive tensiometers in the fields of over 500 farmers, yielding water savings of 30-35 percent.

Concurrently with the tensiometer trials, the team also recruited a smaller number of farmers to adopt a different way of cultivating rice altogether: Direct seeding of rice.

In traditional rice cultivation, rice is sprouted in a nursery; sprouted seedlings are then transplanted into standing water. With direct seeding, rice seed is sown and sprouted directly into the field, eliminating the laborious process of planting seedlings by hand and greatly reducing the crop’s water requirements.

Conventional rice production requires standing water

Sanitation/Wastewater

• India tops the list of nations lacking toilets
• India hunts for a Rural Toilet Design, 1000 Euros up for grabs
• 82% of rural India deprived of three basic necessities of life — tapped drinking water, electricity connection and sanitation
• There are 700 million cell phone connections in India, but only half this number of Indians have access to private toilets, says a UN study

The paper argues that watershed management has to be fluid to take into consideration new realities like change in flow conditions, external realities like unintended impacts and the need to maintain minimum downstream flows for environmental and other purposes.