Rainfed Agriculture

Agriculture is a vital sector in India with about 60% of the population engaged in agricultural vocations and contributing to about 30% of the GDP. It consumes about 80% of water used in the country and 76% of the net irrigated area in the country is from ground water sources.

This paper by the Madras Institute for Development Studies presents estimates of the ‘consumptive use’ of water in crop production; the ratio of consumptive use to gross water utilization; and productivity per unit of consumptive use.

Altered frequencies and intensities of extreme weather, together with sea level rise, are expected to have mostly adverse effects on natural and human systems.

The UN Panel on Climate Change is informing the world on what damage global warming can cause. But a recent study shows how temperature changes have already hit the global economy and Indian agriculture is suffering the brunt of it.

India is gifted with heterogeneous landforms and variety of climatic conditions such as the lofty mountains, the raverine deltas, high altitude forests, peninsular plateaus, variety of geological formations endowed with temperature varying from arctic cold to equatorial hot, and rainfall from extreme aridity with a few cms (<10 cm) to pre humid with world's maxim

Consisting mainly of arid and semi-arid areas and the country's 200 backward districts, these rainfed regions are concentrated in 13 states.

Tarun Bharat Sangh and Rajendar Singh started a massive campaign to spread awareness of traditional water harvesting structures in order to restore the water resources of arid Rajasthan. The aim was to popularize the use of such traditional structures across the country.

Climage Change, Indias perceptions, positions, policies and possibilities, written by Jyoti K Parikh and Kirit Parikh, Indira Gandhi

This paper on Bundelkhand from their Water and Sanitation Perspective series of WaterAid presents how ecological degradation and faulty policies make drinking water scarce and less accessible.