It is widely held that surface irrigation is becoming increasingly irrelevant in India’s irrigation landscape in spite of increased investments, and therefore future investments in irrigation should be diverted for well irrigation.
The key questions being investigated in this paper are –
The article makes the following arguments –
Finally, it is fallacious to argue that well irrigation alone can boost agricultural growth and reduce poverty in eastern India as it has very low per capita arable land, and offers low marginal returns from irrigation owing to humidity and high rainfall.
The paper can be downloaded below -