Depletion of ground water in Punjab
The Punjab state farmers commission has asked the state government to make delayed-sowing of rice mandatory. The move comes at a time when agriculture in Punjab is facing its worst spell since 1970. Last year, the state recorded 1.86 per cent growth in farming. Moreover, groundwater resources in the state have taken a sharp dip. In a desperate move to arrest the falling water table, the state electricity board restricted power supply to the farmers. Experts say the crops, if sowed late, consume less water, eventually helping in saving groundwater.
According to experts, cultivation of rice crops–summer rice or sathi and the monsoon rice–has aggravated the groundwater depletion. Under dry conditions, rice needs to be irrigated 24 to 28 times, constituting 37 per cent of the total water demand of Punjab.
Over 70 per cent of the tubewells in the state are in the central districts and about 85 per cent of the land is used for rice during kharif season. As a consequence,118 of the 138 blocks in Punjab are overexploited. Area irrigated by tubewells has gone up from 0.2 million to 2.4 million ha in the last decade. Scientists are asking farmers to move away from paddy and replace it with less-water-requiring but high value crops.
The pusa 44 hybrid variety of rice which the farmers cultivate today takes a longer period to mature. It is prone to diseases like the bacterial leaf blight disease. Due to the longer maturity period, farmers sow it in May so that it matures on time, making it vulnerable to the pests affecting saplings planted late. This variety of rice is meant for Bihar, western up and some parts of Haryana.
Punjab has exhausted its upper layer of groundwater and farmers are now using high-horsepower pumps. Till 2006, submersibles replaced about 30 per cent of the centrifugal pumps in the state, to draw in deep lying water. The trend has also taken its toll on the state’s demand for electricity. The rush for powerful pumps has caused financial problems to many of the farmers.
Variation in Crop Water Demand (ET)
Evapotranspiration (ET) is the sum of evaporation (movement of water to the air from the soil, canopy interception and water bodies) and transpiration (movement of water within a plant which is subsequently lost as vapours through stomata). It is expressed in terms of depth of water. Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) is the amount of water that could be evaporated and transpired if there was sufficient water available. It is important to note that the ET varies from crop to crop and year to year depending upon rainfall, temperatures, humidity, wind speeds, etc.
Act to Save Underground Water
The farmers had started planting paddy beginning from the first week of May for convenience as the research results indicate that paddy crop transplanted from 10th June onwards has the same productivity . Thus, to delay the transplanting to save lot of water, as the evapo-transpiration is much less compared to May, at the initiative of the Punjab State Farmers Commission, ‘the Punjab preservation of sub-soil water Act, 2009’ was promulgated as an Ordinance in 2008. It has been effectively implemented and ensured that the ‘sowing of paddy nursery was not before May 10’ and the ‘transplanting of paddy nursery was not before June 10’. During 2008, the combined effect of more (than normal) rainfall and the Act led to improvements in water table, estimated as almost equal contribution to total at 80 to 100 cms; and is within the range of provisional estimates from the monitored data.
It has been estimated that about 10 cms of the additional monsoon rainfall would restore the long term balance. The Act saves about 5 cms. In a low rainfall year, the savings could be higher because due to the Act, the transplanting is further staggered as the expectation of rain enters the decision process, like in 2009 with the lowest monsoon rainfall of the decade.
The estimates of the available supply of water in the long run are somewhat more thoroughly monitored and therefore more precisely known; these are somewhat static but for annual variations of rainfall and seasonal flows; the latter also having been maneuvered by the ‘political shifts’ from one region/ area to another one. However, shifting the excessive flow of canal water to areas, where the underground water is brackish and ‘not fit for use’, the recharge is the ‘net loss’ (for it cannot be pumped out for use). It also ultimately leads to other problems like water-logging, etc. for which the public investment in drainage systems becomes necessary. This is what has happened precisely and silently over the last few decades by inter-linking the rivers and large-scale diversion of surface water supply from recharging the sweet-water zones to the brackish ones. Various ‘water-use-efficiency’ possibilities have also been discussed earlier; more need to be researched. The evaluation of the technology-investment options like happy seeder, laser leveler, ridger/trencher, etc. from the perspective of savings in water and other benefits is needed.
Agricultural development in Punjab started around the water management, whether it was the enthusiastic land mark of achieving the consolidation of the fragmented holdings upto mid-1960s, i.e., even prior to the high-yielding varieties era or during the era through the complementary policies of institutional credit and electricity supply (and others) that facilitated the private/farmers investments in tubewells . As of today there are more than a million electric tubewells in Punjab, of which more than half have been replaced over time with the submersible ones in search of water from the deeper layers underground; and almost every one is with a standby availability of a diesel engine/generator set, in case of scarce electricity supply. The area irrigated by tubewells is 3 million hectare, which is about 71 per cent of the net cultivated area of the State, and is cropped twice a year, irrigated many times throughout the year. Some concerted policy initiatives and capital investments need to be channelled judiciously, for it would be unaffordable to let the story of development end with its mismanagement that had been depleting the underground water, which had accumulated over the centuries, at the rate that the crisis showed up in a quarter century, and, which even worsened over the next quarter century
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