ADOPTION OF MICRO IRRIGATION IN INDIA: FACTORS AND POLICIES - Management, Performance, and Applications of Micro Irrigation Systems - page 11

TABLE 3 Drip irrigation and cropping pattern changes (percent), 2007-2008.

Crops Drip adopters Non-adopters

Before After Before After

Banana 9.54 1.89 34.24 —

Coconut 45.04 88.63 — 64.2

Cotton — — 2.67 —

Maize — 0.87 3.82 2.2

Paddy 6.47 1.02 35.41 13.5

Sugarcane 5.7 — 22.08 17.85

Turmeric 6.71 0.21 — 1.67

Vegetables including tomato 26.54 7.38 1.78 0.58

1.4.3 IRRIGATION INVESTMENTS AND DISTRIBUTION OF PUMP HORSE
POWER
Growing groundwater scarcity coupled with cheaper power supply resulted in further
degradation of the groundwater resource in the water scarce regions like Coimbatore.
Pro-rata system (PR) has been commonly used in most of the Indian states till
last seventies. In this method, farmers have to pay electricity cost based on the con-
sumption of electricity in kWh. Tariff rate sometime vary with farmers' category and
horsepower of pump-sets. In this method, farmers who use more electricity will have
to pay more cost for electricity and vice-versa.
After eighties, many Indian states started to introduce fl at rate system (FR) for
agriculture. In this FR, tariff charges will be fi xed based on the HP of pump-sets and
not by the quantity of electricity consumption. Pump-set owning farmers can consume
electricity as much as they need. Farmers need not pay tariff for every month. Nor-
mally it will be remitted once in three months/six months. Studies found that fl at rate
tariff policy has strong equity and poverty alleviation benefi ts. It reduces the working
costs of State Electricity Boards that spend considerable amount of money for meter
reading, etc. It also allows the bore well owning farmers to sell water in a low price for
the poor nonbore well farmers.
It is argued that cheaper pricing policies of electricity and shifting of tariff from
pro-rata to fl at rate have reduced the marginal costs of water as well as electricity to
zero. As a result farmers use both groundwater and electricity ineffi ciently. The effect
of such cheaper electricity has resulted in negative externalities such as over pumping,
changes in crop pattern towards more water intensive crops, well deepening, increase
in well investments, pumping costs, well failure and abandonment and out migration
which are increasing at a much faster rate. To cope up with the degradation of ground-
water resource, farmers make huge investments on groundwater extraction. They in-
clude investment on drilling new bore wells or dug wells, deepening of existing wells,
construction of intermediate storage structures and micro irrigation technologies like
drip irrigation, sprinkler irrigation and so on. Thus, the investment on irrigation struc-