Abstract:
The available surface water resources are not adequate enough to cover the entire cultivated area in the country. It is estimated that even on full exploitation, the available surface water resources could cover only half the cultivated area for irrigation. It is, therefore, important that both the surface and groundwater resources have to be used in an integrated manner, by planning conjunctive use rightly recommended by National Water Policy-I987 and further stressed in the recently framed National Water Policy-2002. The policy recommends planning for conjunctive use right at the formulation of the project itself. Even in the existing irrigation projects, the conjunctive use planning has a great scope in optimum utilization of both the resources. Conjunctive use has been practiced in the country in some form or the other, although it may not have been done in a planned manner.
Conjunctive use is the combined and integrated management of surface water and groundwater for optimal utilization of available water resources. Any conjunctive
use model consists of an optimization model. This optimization model is required for conjunctive use planning to obtain optimal cropping pattern, allocation of surface and groundwater resources, besides satisfying a series of constraints.
