Report on Minor Irrigation (MI) Schemes

Why is in news? Ministry of Jal Shakti Releases the 6th Census Report on Minor Irrigation (MI) Schemes

The Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation released the report on the 6th census on minor irrigation schemes.

Highlights of the report:

As per the report, 23.14 million minor irrigation (MI) schemes have been reported in the country, out of which 21.93 million (94.8%) are Ground Water (GW) and 1.21 million (5.2%) are Surface Water (SW) schemes.

Uttar Pradesh possesses the largest number of MI schemes in the country followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Leading States in Ground Water schemes are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

In SW schemes Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand have the highest share.

GW schemes comprise dugwells, shallow tube wells, medium tube wells and deep tube wells.

The SW schemes comprise surface flow and surface lift schemes.

There has been increase of about 1.42 million in MI schemes during 6th MI census as compared to 5th Census.

At the national level, both GW and SW schemes have increased by 6.9% and 1.2%, respectively.

-wells have highest share in MI schemes followed by shallow tube-wells, medium tube-wells and deep tube-wells. Maharashtra is the leading State in dug-wells, surface flow and surface lift schemes.

Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab are the leading States in shallow tube-wells, medium tube-wells and deep tube-wells, respectively.

Out of all MI schemes, 97.0% are ‘in use’, 2.1% are ‘temporarily not in use’ whereas 0.9% are ‘permanently not in use’.

A majority of MI schemes (96.6%) are under private ownership. In GW schemes, the share of private entities in the ownership is 98.3% whereas in SW schemes the respective share is 64.2%.

For the first time, the information about gender of the owner of MI scheme was also collected in case of individual ownership.

Out of all the individually owned schemes, 18.1% are owned by women.

Around 60.2% schemes have single source of finance whereas 39.8% schemes have more than one source of finance. In single source of finance, majority of schemes (79.5%) are being financed by own savings of individual farmer.

About the Scheme:

Minor Irrigation schemes contribute a major share in the growing irrigation across the country.

Irrigation schemes using either ground water or surface water and having a Culturable Command Area upto 2000 hectare individually are categorized as Minor Irrigation Schemes.

The schemes have been categorized broadly into six major types; (1) Dugwell (2) Shallow tubewell (3) Medium Tubewell (4) Deep tubewell (5) Surface flow schemes and (6) Surface lift schemes.

The need for conducting the census of Minor Irrigation arose as it was felt that a database of these schemes will serve the planning, development and management needs of these schemes which contribute to agriculture in a big way.

A sound and reliable data base for minor irrigation schemes is essential for effective planning and policy making in this sector.

With this objective, Government of India has been conducting census of minor irrigation schemes. So far, five censuses have been conducted with reference year 1986-87, 1993-94, 2000-01, 2006-07 and 2013-14 respectively.

The 6th minor irrigation census with reference year 2017-18 was completed in 32 States/ UTs. The 6th MI census work was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The census was conducted under the centrally sponsored scheme “Irrigation Census”.

Detailed information on various parameters like irrigation sources (dug well, shallow tube well, medium tube well, deep tube well, surface flow and surface lift schemes), irrigation potential created (IPC), potential utilized, ownership, holding size of land by owner, devices used for lifting water, sources of energy, energy conserving devices such as sprinkler and drip irrigation, use of non-conventional energy sources such as solar pumps, wind mills etc was collected.

This report will be useful for planners, policy makers, researcher scholars, agricultural and ground water scientists, administrators & all concerned with development of irrigation and agricultural economy of the country.