Irrigation in India: Sources, PMKSY and Problems

Irrigation Needs of India: Monsoon Variability and Crop Water Demand

Rainfall Variability and the Case for Irrigation

The need for irrigation in India begins with the monsoon. Rainfall is concentrated in a few months and is unevenly spread over the country, so the north-western plains and the Deccan Plateau receive too little, while even high-rainfall States face breaks and failures of the monsoon.

Irrigation also follows the needs of particular crops. Rice, sugarcane and jute need far more water than rainfall alone can give in most regions, and the high-yielding varieties introduced in the 1960s need a regular supply of moisture. Where water is assured, farmers can raise more than one crop on the same field in a year, and irrigated land gives higher yields than unirrigated land. This is why the Green Revolution strategy succeeded mainly in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, where wheat and rice are grown largely under irrigation.

The link between water and food is visible in the cropping pattern. In 2023‑24, cereals and millets took about 58 per cent of the area irrigated under crops, followed by oilseeds at 11 per cent, pulses at 7 per cent, and fruits and vegetables at 7 per cent. Coverage also differs sharply between crops. Irrigation reaches less than 15 per cent of the area under millets and around 26 per cent of the area under pulses, but about 67 per cent of the area under rice.

Protective and Productive Irrigation and Project Classes

Irrigation in India is planned with two different aims. Protective irrigation protects crops from a shortage of soil moisture. It acts as a supplement to rainfall, and its strategy is to give some moisture to the largest possible area. Productive irrigation supplies enough moisture through the cropping season to obtain high productivity, so the water applied per unit of cultivated land is higher. A drought-prone plateau district therefore needs a thin spread of protective irrigation, while the Green Revolution belt depends on productive irrigation.

Irrigation projects are also grouped by the size of their culturable command area (CCA), the area a project can irrigate:

• Major projects: Projects with a CCA of more than 10,000 hectares.
• Medium projects: Projects with a CCA between 2,000 and 10,000 hectares.
• Minor projects: Projects with a CCA of 2,000 hectares or less; these draw on both surface water and groundwater, while major and medium projects mostly use surface water.

The ultimate irrigation potential of the country, the area that could finally be brought under irrigation by surface water and groundwater together, has been assessed at 139 million hectares, or 1,39,000 thousand hectares. Against this, the net irrigated area in 2023‑24 was 82,416 thousand hectares.

Sources of Irrigation in India

Canal Irrigation: Perennial Canals, Inundation Channels and Lift Schemes

Canal irrigation carries river water to fields through a network of main canals, branches and distributaries. A perennial canal is fed all year from a river or a storage dam. The Himalayan rivers of the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra systems are perennial because they are fed both by melting snow and by rainfall, so the old canal systems of the northern plains draw on them. Peninsular rivers have a non-perennial flow, the Narmada and the Tapi being exceptions, so their water has to be held in storage dams before canals can use it.

Inundation channels only lead the flood water of a river onto the fields, as in the flood plains of Bengal, where people built them to irrigate their crops.

Canal building in India is old, and two works mark its early history:

• Grand Anicut (Kallanai): Built across the Kaveri by the Chola ruler Karikala, it is the oldest water-regulating structure in India still in use.
• Canals of Firoz Shah Tughlaq: In the fourteenth century he built the most extensive canal irrigation system of his time, around the Indo-Gangetic doab and the region west of the Yamuna.

After Independence, multipurpose river valley projects such as Bhakra-Nangal, Hirakud, Damodar Valley and Nagarjuna Sagar, and the Indira Gandhi Canal Project in Rajasthan, were taken up mainly for irrigation. The Indira Gandhi Canal, the longest canal in India, begins at the Harike Barrage at the confluence of the Satluj and Beas and carries water into the Thar Desert, where mustard, cotton and wheat are now grown.

Three figures from 2023‑24 show the place of canals today:

• National share: Canals irrigated 17,420 thousand hectares, about 21 per cent of the net irrigated area, against 39.78 per cent in 1950‑51.
• Ownership: Government canals account for almost all of it, 17,257 thousand hectares, and private canals for only 163 thousand hectares.
• State weight: The largest canal-irrigated areas were in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, but canals carry a larger share than the national 21 per cent in Haryana, which irrigated 1,237 of its 3,225 thousand hectares by canal, and in Andhra Pradesh, with 1,008 of its 2,603 thousand hectares.

Lift irrigation raises water from a river, canal or reservoir to fields at a higher level by pumping. Two large schemes show its reach:

• Sardar Sarovar Project: On the Narmada, it irrigates 37,500 hectares in the tribal hilly tract of Maharashtra by lift.
• Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project: On the Godavari in Telangana, opened on 21 June 2019, it is the world's largest multi-stage lift irrigation project.

Wells and Tube-Wells: The Largest Source of Irrigation

Well irrigation draws groundwater from aquifers below the fields. A tube-well, or borewell, is a narrow, mechanically drilled well that reaches deep aquifers and is worked by a pump, while open wells, the older kind, were for centuries worked by lifting devices turned by oxen or by hand. Tube-wells spread rapidly after the 1960s, together with the Green Revolution, helped by subsidised electricity for pump-sets and easier credit. The Indo-Gangetic Plain has large groundwater storage and needs only shallow bores, while the hard-rock aquifers of the Peninsula need deeper drilling and give less certain yields.

In 2023‑24, tube-wells irrigated 39,405 thousand hectares, about 48 per cent of the net irrigated area, and other wells a further 12,468 thousand hectares, about 15 per cent. The share of tube-wells has risen from 0.55 per cent in 1960‑61, while the share of other wells has fallen from 28.67 per cent in 1950‑51. India has the world's largest area irrigated from groundwater wells, ahead of China and the United States.

Groundwater carries most of the irrigation in the States of the Green Revolution. In 2023‑24, Punjab irrigated 3,182 thousand hectares of its 4,109 thousand hectares from tube-wells and the rest from canals, and Uttar Pradesh irrigated 9,797 thousand hectares of its 13,656 thousand hectares from tube-wells. In Maharashtra, open wells matter more than tube-wells, at 3,155 thousand hectares out of 6,496 thousand hectares. Cheap and, in places, free electricity for farm pumps made groundwater the farmer's first choice, and the same policy let water tables fall to dangerously low levels in parts of the country.

The use of wells for irrigation is very old in India. The Rigveda refers to wells from which a rope strap and a wheel drew up pails of water, and the araghatta, a large wheel with earthen pots fastened to its rim, lifted water from wells. It was turned by oxen or people, and the same kind of device is also called the Persian wheel or saqiyah.

Tank Irrigation and Traditional Water Structures

Tank irrigation stores monsoon rainfall and run-off in small reservoirs, from which water is released to the fields as and when it is required. Tanks suit the Peninsula because its rivers are non-perennial and carry very little water in the dry season, so water has to be stored while it is available.

Tanks are among India's oldest irrigation works. Bhopal Lake, built in the eleventh century, was one of the largest artificial lakes of its time, and the tank at Hauz Khas in Delhi was built by Alauddin Khalji to supply the Siri Fort area. In the hills and deserts, communities built their own structures, such as the kuls or guls of the Western Himalayas, which divert stream water to village tanks, and the khadins of Jaisalmer and johads of other parts of Rajasthan, which hold rainwater on the fields.

The share of tanks in the net irrigated area fell from 17.33 per cent in 1950‑51 to about 4 per cent in 2023‑24, when they irrigated 3,136 thousand hectares. Neglect and silting reduced the storage of many tanks. Telangana illustrates the trend. About 70,000 tanks irrigated around 25 lakh acres (about 10 lakh hectares) in 1956, but only 46,531 tanks were left by 2014, nearly half of them dry. Telangana's Mission Kakatiya, begun on 12 March 2015, desilted these tanks and lakes to restore their storage. In 2023‑24 the largest tank-irrigated area was in West Bengal, at 904 thousand hectares, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 440, Tamil Nadu with 401 and Telangana with 372 thousand hectares.

Micro-Irrigation: Drip and Sprinkler Systems

How Drip and Sprinkler Irrigation Work

Micro-irrigation applies water in small, measured quantities close to the plant through a network of pipes, instead of flooding the whole field. Drip irrigation delivers water slowly and directly to the root zone through small outlets, called emitters, fitted on thin pipes or tubes. In on-line drip systems the drippers are fixed along the pipe wherever a plant stands, which suits crops with uneven spacing; in in-line systems the drippers are built into the pipe at fixed intervals, so all plants get water evenly.

Sprinkler irrigation sprays water under pressure into the air through nozzles attached to a network of pipes, so that it falls on the crop like rain. It is widely used for cereals, pulses, spices and other field crops. Its forms range from portable sprinklers and semi-permanent systems to micro sprinklers for nurseries and leafy vegetables, mini sprinklers for close-growing crops such as groundnut, potato and onion, and large-volume rain-guns that cover a big area quickly. Both drip and sprinkler systems allow fertigation, the application of fertilisers with irrigation water directly to the zone where most of the plant's roots develop.

Water-Use Efficiency and the Limits of Micro-Irrigation

Water-use efficiency is, at its simplest, the ratio of the crop biomass produced to the water the plant uses; on a farm it rises when more crop is obtained from each unit of water applied. Flood irrigation loses much of its water to evaporation and deep drainage, while drip and sprinkler systems deliver water directly to the crop with minimum losses.

Micro-irrigation saves 20 to 48 per cent of water, 10 to 17 per cent of energy, 30 to 40 per cent of labour cost and 11 to 19 per cent of fertiliser, and raises crop yields by 20 to 38 per cent, and an evaluation of Per Drop More Crop found that water-use efficiency improved by 30 to 70 per cent under the scheme.

Drip irrigation lessens weed growth, because only the soil around each plant is wetted, and lessens soil erosion, because no water runs over the surface. Because it saves water at the farm level, it helps conserve groundwater. Between its start in 2015‑16 and July 2026, the Per Drop More Crop scheme brought over 115 lakh hectares under micro-irrigation, about 8.11 per cent of India's net sown area; Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Rajasthan covered the largest areas in 2025‑26.

Micro-irrigation has limits. The equipment is costly, so the scheme meets 55 per cent of the cost of the system for small and marginal farmers and 45 per cent for other farmers, for up to five hectares per beneficiary. Emitters clog unless the water is filtered and the system maintained. Because drip systems apply so little water, salts brought in with the irrigation water can build up in the root zone, usually at the edge of the wetted patch, so drip does not by itself remove soil salinity. Where water is severely limited, farmers may use the saved water to grow more rather than to pump less, so the gain shows up as higher production and not as lower withdrawal.

Micro-irrigation is also not the only answer for dry areas. Dryland farming, in regions with less than 75 cm of annual rainfall, relies mainly on hardy, drought-resistant crops such as ragi, bajra, moong and gram, with soil moisture conservation and rainwater harvesting.

Irrigated Area in India: Spread Across States and Growth

State-wise Irrigation Coverage in 2023‑24

The irrigated area in India is spread very unevenly across States. In 2023‑24, the net irrigated area was 100 per cent of the net sown area in Punjab, 91.75 per cent in Haryana and 83.44 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, and Puducherry reached 97.43 per cent. At the other end, Himachal Pradesh irrigated 21.31 per cent and Mizoram 6.07 per cent of their net sown area. The national average was 59.30 per cent, so about two-fifths of the net sown area still depends on rainfall alone.

The pattern follows the physical base. The alluvial plains of the north-west and the Ganga valley combine perennial rivers with rich aquifers, so both canals and tube-wells work well there. The Peninsula, with non-perennial rivers and hard-rock aquifers, depends more on tanks, open wells and storage dams, and its coverage is lower. The hill and north-eastern States rely heavily on rainfall, so little of their land is irrigated.

Gross irrigated area stood at 1,30,548 thousand hectares in 2023‑24, or 59.91 per cent of the gross cropped area, and irrigation intensity, the ratio of gross to net irrigated area, was 158.40 per cent.

Growth of Irrigated Area Since 1950‑51

The irrigated area in India has grown about fourfold since Independence. The net irrigated area rose from 20,853 thousand hectares in 1950‑51 to 82,416 thousand hectares in 2023‑24, and its share of the net sown area rose from 17.56 per cent to 59.30 per cent. India began with a handicap. At Partition about one-third of the irrigated land of undivided India went to Pakistan, which reduced the irrigated share in independent India.

The growth came in distinct phases, each led by a different source:

• 1950s and 1960s: Large canal and multipurpose projects of the Five Year Plans raised canal irrigation from 8,295 thousand hectares in 1950‑51 to 12,838 thousand hectares in 1970‑71.
• Late 1960s onwards: Tube-wells spread with the Green Revolution and subsidised electricity for pump-sets, from 135 thousand hectares in 1960‑61 to 4,461 thousand hectares in 1970‑71 and 14,257 thousand hectares in 1990‑91.
• 1990s onwards: Canal area levelled off between about 14,000 and 19,000 thousand hectares, while tube-wells kept growing to 39,405 thousand hectares in 2023‑24 and became the main source of growth.

Tanks moved the other way, from 3,613 thousand hectares in 1950‑51 to a low of 1,585 thousand hectares in 2009‑10, before recovering to 3,136 thousand hectares in 2023‑24. The result is a shift from surface water to groundwater. In 1950‑51 canals, other wells and tanks were the main sources, while by 2023‑24 tube-wells irrigated more land than canals and tanks together.

NCERT puts irrigation at about 33 per cent of the cultivated area, while the land use statistics for 2023‑24 give 59.30 per cent of the net sown area. NCERT's figure reflects older data, and the 2023‑24 figure is the current one.

Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY)

PMKSY Objectives: Har Khet Ko Pani and Per Drop More Crop

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) was launched on 1 July 2015 to give every farm access to some means of protective irrigation. Its two mottoes state its purpose: Har Khet Ko Pani (water to every field) aims to expand the area under assured irrigation, and Per Drop More Crop aims to raise the efficiency with which that water is used on the farm. The scheme brought earlier irrigation and watershed programmes under one umbrella so that water sources, distribution and farm-level use could be planned together.

The scheme's broad objectives are these:

• Converge investment: Bring irrigation investment together at field level through district and, where needed, sub-district water-use plans.
• Expand assured irrigation: Enhance physical access to water on the farm and expand the cultivable area under assured irrigation.
• Raise efficiency: Improve on-farm water-use efficiency and promote precision irrigation and other water-saving technologies.
• Recharge aquifers: Enhance the recharge of aquifers and introduce sustainable water conservation practices.
• Develop rainfed areas: Develop rainfed areas through the watershed approach to soil and water conservation.
• Reuse wastewater: Explore the reuse of treated municipal wastewater for peri-urban agriculture.
• Draw private investment: Attract greater private investment in irrigation.

The scheme's guidelines provide for an Inter-Ministerial National Steering Committee under the Prime Minister and a National Executive Committee under the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog to oversee its implementation. In December 2021, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved PMKSY for 2021‑26 with an outlay of ₹93,068 crore, including central support of ₹37,454 crore to the States.

PMKSY Components: AIBP, Har Khet Ko Pani and Watershed Development

PMKSY works through separate components run by three departments. The Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) finances the completion of ongoing major and medium irrigation projects, including national projects. It began in 1996‑97, when the Centre gave additional assistance to the States by way of loans on a matching basis for early completion of selected large irrigation and multipurpose projects. Between 2016‑17 and August 2025, 66 major and medium projects were completed under it, creating or restoring irrigation potential of 29.22 lakh hectares.

Har Khet Ko Pani creates new water sources through minor irrigation, from both surface water and groundwater, and improves physical access to water on the farm. It has four sub-components: Command Area Development and Water Management; Surface Minor Irrigation; Repair, Renovation and Restoration of Water Bodies; and Ground Water Development. Command area development is older than PMKSY. The Command Area Development Programme has been under implementation since 1974‑75 to close the gap between the irrigation potential created by projects and the potential actually used, and to raise crop productivity in their command areas.

In April 2025, the Cabinet approved the Modernisation of Command Area Development and Water Management (M‑CADWM) as a sub-scheme of PMKSY for 2025‑26, with an initial outlay of ₹1,600 crore. It began with pilot projects in different agroclimatic zones and is designed to carry water from existing canals or other sources to farm gates of up to one hectare through underground pressurised pipes, to use supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and Internet of Things technology for water accounting, and to hand the assets to Water User Societies under Irrigation Management Transfer.

The Watershed Development Component, run by the Department of Land Resources, develops rainfed and degraded land through soil and water conservation. Per Drop More Crop, the micro-irrigation component, was part of PMKSY from 2015‑16 to 2021‑22 and has since 2022‑23 been implemented under the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana by the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

Other Programmes: Atal Bhujal Yojana, Watershed Projects and Recharge

Several programmes outside PMKSY address groundwater and rainfed land. The Atal Bhujal Yojana (Atal Jal), launched on 25 December 2019, was a community-led groundwater management scheme run as a pilot from 1 April 2020 to 15 October 2025 in 8,203 water-stressed gram panchayats of 229 blocks in 80 districts of seven States: Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. These States hold about 37 per cent of India's water-stressed blocks. Its aim was to change community behaviour from consumption to conservation, and it funded check dams, ponds and recharge shafts and promoted micro-irrigation through convergence and incentive funds.

Watershed management is the efficient management and conservation of surface and groundwater within a watershed. It prevents run-off, stores water and recharges groundwater through percolation tanks and recharge wells, and in a broad sense conserves and regenerates all the natural and human resources of the area. Its success depends on community participation. Examples are Haryali, a Central project carried out by gram panchayats; Neeru-Meeru in Andhra Pradesh; and Arvary Pani Sansad in Alwar, Rajasthan. Ralegan Siddhi, a village in Maharashtra, became a model: Its people repaired a leaking percolation tank, which filled the wells below it, and later banned water-intensive sugarcane.

The Jal Shakti Abhiyan, run every year since 2019, brings funds from many schemes together for water harvesting and artificial recharge. Mission Amrit Sarovar had built or revived nearly 69,000 water bodies by December 2025, and the Central Ground Water Board's Master Plan for Artificial Recharge to Groundwater, 2020, outlines about 1.42 crore rainwater harvesting and recharge structures to harness 185 billion cubic metres of water.

Problems of Irrigation in India

Groundwater Depletion and Over-Exploited Assessment Units

Groundwater depletion is the most serious problem of irrigation in India, because the largest source of irrigation draws on it. Agriculture accounts for 92 per cent of groundwater utilisation in the country. The 2025 assessment of the Central Ground Water Board put total annual groundwater recharge at 448.52 billion cubic metres, the annual extractable resource at 407.75 billion cubic metres and annual extraction for all uses at 247.22 billion cubic metres. The national picture hides severe local stress. In 2025, Punjab extracted 26.27 billion cubic metres against an extractable resource of 16.80 billion cubic metres, Haryana 12.72 against 9.30, and Rajasthan 17.10 against 11.62, so these States draw more each year than their annual extractable resource.

Groundwater assessment units, such as blocks, are classed as safe, semi-critical, critical or over-exploited by their level of extraction. The share of over-exploited units fell from 17.2 per cent in 2017 to 10.8 per cent in 2025, and the share of safe units rose from 62.6 per cent to 73.14 per cent, as recharge rose from 432 to 448.52 billion cubic metres. The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA), which was constituted under Section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, monitors and regulates groundwater extraction, and several States, including Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Punjab, have their own groundwater laws.

The causes reinforce one another:

• Cheap power: With free or cheap electricity, pumping costs the farmer little, so extraction runs ahead of recharge.
• Water-hungry crops: Rice and sugarcane are grown where rainfall cannot support them, and in the north-west rice and wheat follow each other on the same fields every year.
• Weak aquifers: The hard-rock aquifers of the Peninsula need deeper drilling and give variable yields, and the desert aquifers of Rajasthan recharge slowly, so pumping soon outruns recharge.
• Loss of surface storage: Silted tanks hold less monsoon water, which leaves farmers more dependent on wells and borewells.

Over-pumping harms water quality as well as quantity. Over-withdrawal has raised fluoride concentration in groundwater in parts of Rajasthan and Maharashtra and arsenic concentration in parts of West Bengal and Bihar. As the water table falls, wells dry up and farmers drill ever deeper borewells.

The Ganga plain shows what is at stake. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar extracted 46.89 and 14.47 billion cubic metres of groundwater in 2025, and wheat and rice there are grown mainly with the help of irrigation, so a falling water table in the Gangetic plain would cut both the rabi harvest and the double cropping on which India's food security rests.

Waterlogging, Salinisation and Alkalinity in Canal Commands

Waterlogging is the saturation of soil with water for much of the time, so that air cannot reach plant roots. In irrigated land it is common where heavy watering meets poor drainage, and it usually comes with salinity, because waterlogged soil prevents the leaching of the salts that irrigation water brings in. Most crops except rice cannot tolerate it.

Salinisation is the build-up of salts in the soil. Almost all irrigation water carries some dissolved salts, which stay behind in the root zone when plants take up water. In drylands with saline groundwater, when the water table lies within about two to three metres of the surface in clayey soils, salts in the groundwater rise by capillary action and collect at the surface as the water evaporates.

Where sodium dominates, an alkaline (sodic) soil forms; this is alkalisation. Its structure breaks down, and water can scarcely infiltrate or drain through it. A large tract of irrigated land in India has lost its fertility in this way, through waterlogging, salinisation and alkalisation, particularly in the intensively irrigated plains of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. The shift to water-intensive commercial crops in canal commands has added to the problem, and leguminous crops that once restored soil nitrogen have been displaced from the irrigated cropping pattern.

The remedy lies in leaching salts out of the root zone with good-quality water, together with drainage that keeps the water table down; gypsum is the most common compound used to reclaim sodic soil.

Inefficiency, Monsoon Dependence and Unfinished Projects

Irrigation in India also suffers from problems of management. The gap between the irrigation potential created by projects and the potential actually used is a long-standing problem, which is why command area development was begun in 1974‑75 and AIBP was created in 1996‑97 to finish projects already under way. Canal systems themselves depend on the monsoon. A poor south-west monsoon reduces the water in reservoirs and canals just when farmers need it most. Large dams have also come under scrutiny, because they alter the natural flow of rivers, trap sediment in their reservoirs and submerge vegetation and soil.

Lift schemes and tube-wells also tie irrigation to energy, because the irrigation potential they create depends on a reliable supply of electricity for the pumps and on their maintenance.

Inter-State River Water Disputes: Constitution and Tribunals

Inter-State river water disputes arise because rivers cross State boundaries while water is a State subject. Water, including water supplies, irrigation and canals, is Entry 17 of the State List, but this is subject to Entry 56 of the Union List, which gives the Union the regulation and development of inter-State rivers and river valleys to the extent Parliament declares by law to be expedient in the public interest. Article 262 of the Constitution empowers Parliament to provide by law for the adjudication of any dispute over the use, distribution or control of the waters of an inter-State river, and to exclude the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and other courts over such a dispute.

The Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, was enacted under Article 262 and last amended in 2002. Nine tribunals have been set up under it. The decisions of five, the first Krishna, Godavari, Narmada, Kaveri and Mahadayi tribunals, are published in the Official Gazette and binding on the States. The decisions of the Ravi-Beas, the second Krishna and the Vansadhara tribunals have not been notified and are not yet effective, and the Mahanadi tribunal is still hearing its dispute. The Krishna-Godavari dispute, for example, arose from the objections of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to Maharashtra's plan to divert more water at Koyna for a multipurpose project, which would reduce the flow downstream for their agriculture and industry.

Sustainable Irrigation Management: Recharge, Efficiency and Crop Choice

Measures for Efficient Irrigation and Groundwater Recharge

Efficient irrigation in India rests on using less water for each crop, putting water back into the ground and managing the system with the people who use it.

• Raising efficiency: Drip and sprinkler systems under Per Drop More Crop and piped delivery under M‑CADWM cut losses between the source and the root.
• Completing and using projects: AIBP finishes ongoing projects, and command area development helps turn the potential created into irrigated land.
• Recharging aquifers: Rainwater harvesting, check dams, percolation tanks and the revival of tanks under Repair, Renovation and Restoration of Water Bodies, Mission Amrit Sarovar and the Jal Shakti Abhiyan return monsoon water to the ground.
• Mapping and monitoring groundwater: Aquifer mapping, now in its second phase on water-stressed and quality-affected pockets, and monitoring by the CGWA give planners detailed data.
• Managing with communities: Water User Societies under Irrigation Management Transfer, community-led groundwater management of the kind Atal Jal piloted in seven States, and watershed projects run by gram panchayats give farmers a share in decisions.
• Pricing and crop choice: Pricing irrigation water encourages its efficient use, and replacing water-intensive crops such as sugarcane with pulses and oilseeds, as Ralegan Siddhi did, lowers demand.
• Reusing water: Treated municipal wastewater can irrigate peri-urban fields.
• Conjunctive use: Drawing on canal water and groundwater together, each when the other is short, keeps the water table from rising in canal commands and from falling outside them.

The National Water Policy, 2012, set the direction for these measures. It called for a national framework law and comprehensive legislation for inter-State rivers, recommended treating water as an economic good after the pre-emptive needs for safe drinking water, sanitation and food security are met, asked for benchmarks such as water footprints and water auditing, and stressed adaptation to climate change and community participation in managing water projects.

Sources

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