THE ECONOMICS OF WATER USE AND MANAGEMENT IN DISTRICT SAHARANPUR

Abstract

Water is one of the most essential inputs for growth of crops By providing the desired atmosphere to the crops by way of proper doses of water, the food production can be increased and national economy can be improved substantially. Thus, in view of the vital importance of water and considering its increasing scarcity, the planning and management of this crucial resource and its optimal, economical and equitable use has become a matter of utmost signi ficance. Adequate knowledge of know-how regarding water use and management is essential to the farmers to maximise productivity of irrigated land in the wake of population explosion at the door-step of the nation. The literature reveals that so far as the efficient use of water is concerned, still a lot of research *ork has to be done to make the best use of precious irrigation water under different soils, climatic and topographical situations. The facts of «The Economics of Water Use and Management" have not been investigated with a perspective of farmer's behaviour and therefore, an attempt has been made to fill up the gap in this regard with the objectives: (i) to study the cost of various sources of irrigation water per unit and their accompanying practices, (ii) to analyse the differences in cropping patterns, productivity, levels of technology accompanying different sources of irrigation, (iii) to compare costs and returns from use of different sources of irrigation (including different systems of well irrigation), and to examine the input-output relationship, (iv) to work out' water demand function and gation charges, and (v) t economic criterion for fixation of irri o examine the behaviour of farmers in 111: regard to generated additional income in irrigated agriculture whether it is ploughed back for development of agriculture. To compare and work out the economics of water use and manage ment, Bahadrabad, Roorkee, and Narsan development blocks of Tehsil Roorkee,district Saharanpur (U.P.) have been selected purposively. All the villages of these blocks have been categorised into having irrigation facility and no irrigation facility. Further, the irri gated villages have been classified according to source of irriga tion. A proportionate random sample of villages has been drawn from each category. Thus, 219 farmers from irrigated sample villages and 76 from unirrigated villages have been selected randomly for the study. In addition to these, 20 farmers using indigenous methods of irrigation have also been selected purposively. The study is based on intensive survey method for which the data have been collected from the farmers. However, the secondary data have been collected from official records. To achieve the objectives, the data have been analysed by using the various analy tical methods like growth rate, correlation, regression, standard error,'f test, quadratic function, Cobb-Douglas function etc. The study reveals that the pressure of population on agricul ture is very high in the study area. The rate of literacy is low. The number of tiny holdings is very large resulting uneven distri bution of land and alow average size of operational holdings (1.99 ha ).. The land factor dominated the capital structure as the investment in irrigation, buildings, livestock, and machinery was very low. IV The land use statistics were available for 5,49,303 hectares in the study area. Of the total reported area, 69.31% were under crops and only 1.01% culturable land was lying waste. Hence, a very small expansion of area under cultivation might be possible in the coming decades. The cropping pattern in the study area predominates by food crops and strikingly concentrated upon two grain crops, viz: wheat and paddy. The study reveals that there is a marked difference in cropping pattern of irrigated and unirrigated agriculture. With the introduction of irrigation, a shift has been noticed in the cropping pattern. The wheat and sugarcane crops are replacing the area under Rabi and Kharif crops respectively. The oilseeds, fibres, and pulses are not so popular in the area. However, the area under urd (black gram), and moong (green gram) crops have been increasing. Thus, sugarcane, wheat, and paddy are the important crops of the area. It was also noticed that the canal + tubewell irrigated farms have largest share of gross cropped area due to better control on water supply, m unirrigated villages, wheat crop has the ' largest share in the cropping pattern followed by jowar/bajra, and sugarcane whereas sugarcane is the most important crop of irrigated villages followed by wheat and paddy crop. As the irrigation provides facilities for multiple cropping, the intensity of cropping has gone up to 172.79% as against the maximum of 120.83% on unirrigated farms. In the study area, the emphasis has been given on the use of improved technology like irrigation,HYV of seeds, fertilizers, improved implements, and plant protection measures. However, : v there is a great difference in the levels of technology in irri gated and unirrigated agriculture. The overall consumption of fertilizers was found to be 96.20 kg/ha on irrigated farms as against 37.83 kg/ha on unirrigated farms. Besides, the improved implements are very common in irrigated villages whereas the farmers of unirrigated villages are still dependent on the old implements. The farmers in irrigated villages are using plant protection measures both as curative and prophylactic measures. As against this, the use of plant -protection material is almost negligible on unirrigated farms. Similarly, the farmers in irri gated villages have adopted the HYV of seeds whereas the farmers - in unirrigated villages generally use local varieties of crops. As a result of the use of modern technology, the productivity of crops on irrigated farms is found to be greater than unirrigated farms. The study of per unit cost of water reveals that the canal isthe cheapest source of irrigation water followed by Govt, tubewells, private tubewells, and indigenous sources of irrigation. Although private electric tubewell s are economical than private diesel tubewells, the farmers prefer diesel tubewells due to its assured nature of water supply. The electric supply in rural areas is not regular and adequate and hence farmers can not ope rate electric tubewells whenever they wish to use. Among private tubewells, 20 Ips capacitytubewell is the cheapest source of water for irrigation. Similarly, among different capacity Govt, tubewells, 0.070 m-Vsec. capacity tubewell is most economical. There is a variation in crop-wise costs and returns of diff erent sources of irrigation. The canal ♦ tubewell irrigation gives VI highest net returns followed by private electric tubewells, canal, private diesel tubewells, and Govt, tubewells. The indigenous sources of irrigation account for the lowest net returns due to higher cost of irrigation water. The evapotranspiration (ET) varies from crop to crop due to the nature of crops and seasonal variations. Although ET for sugarcane crop is higher than other crops, the NIR, FIR, GIR are greater in respect of paddy crop. The quadratic function has been fitted for the estimation of demand of water for important crops, it was observed that the area under crops (X1) and irrigation requirement of crop (x3) have posi tive association with demand of water (y) for the important crops of the area. On the other hand, price of water (x2) has negative relation with the demand of water (y). The values of R2 are quite high for all the crops. The production function approach has been adopted for fixa tion of water rates. It was observed that the most desirable water application are 40.4 cms at Rs. 17.31 per cm, 28.29 cms at Rs.17.54 per cm, and 107.23 cms at Rs. 30.93 per cm for paddy, wheat, and sugarcane crops respectively. For determining the production efficiency, the output-input ratios have been calculated for important crops on different size of holdings according to various sources of irrigation. It was found that canal + tubewell irrigation accounts for highest out put-input ratio followed by canal irrigation for all the important crops. vn : The Cobb-Douglas function has been used for functional analysys of input-output relationship and resource use efficiency. The study indicates that the elasticity of coefficients for all the variables are positive indicating the positive relation of independent variables with the output (dependent variable ) of crops. The values of coefficients in respect of xi, x2, and x3 variables were found to be higher on marginal and small farms whereas the values of coefficients of x4 and x$ were greater on medium and large farms. The sum of coefficients indicates the increasing returns to scale in operation on all the farms. The values of R were quite high which indicates that most of the variation in the output could be explained by the inputs included in the function. The values of MVPs indicate that all the farmers were rational in resource mix but they were not using their resou rces optimally. Hence, they can further increase expenditure on all the resources for more earnings. The comparative study of economics of irrigated and unirri gated agriculture reveals that the farmers from irrigated agricul ture reap 2.32 times net income to that of income from unirrigated agriculture. But their behaviour in regard to the use of generated additional income is not rational as they made largest expendi ture on consumption items and consequently the investment made for augmenting production was less than required. However, the farmers of irrigated villages made more investment on farm capital assets and production inputs as compared to the farmers of unirri gated villages. :vi ii : Thus, the present study is very useful as it provides infor mation to:(i) the planners for formulating policies relating to agricultural development, (ii) the farmers to optimise the use of available resources for maximisation of their income for themselves and higher agricultural production for the country, and (iii) develop methodology for further investigations in this field.