Why is it necessary for each farmer to dig a bore well for irrigation?

Why is it necessary for each farmer to dig a bore well for irrigation? Why can't a village come together and dig 4 bore Wells to irrigate their entire village?

What inhibits collectivisation? Why FPOs are not being promoted for providing irrigation?

Existing examples and thoughts, please.

Discussions in LinkedIn

Sunderrajan Krishnan | Executive Director at INREM Foundation, Ashoka Fellow

Groundwater irrigation in India started with community group wells. In 2006, I visited one such scheme called VASFA in Vaishali district, Bihar not too far from where the Buddha sat some thousand years back. VASFA is probably regarded as the oldest functioning group well cooperative. During that year, I also visited several such schemes in Nepal Terai and for most of them, that was the only possibility financially. That was a large scheme being promoted by Nepal govt with some multilateral funding. The AP Well , later APFAMGS is probably the largest such experiment. AP Well promoted group wells for a few years. There was this shared local pipeline experiment in Vickarabad, Telangana. Can one see the tube well companies of North Gujarat as shared groundwater - good question. It will be good to know what has happened to these , learn and prepare for ahead. Also there might have many such experiments during the collective farming era in soviet times. China had a different experiment than these

Nirmalya Choudhury | Faculty, JTSDS, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

It will be important to also learn from the PGWM experiences. I saw some interesting findings in Telengana... sometimes it might be farmers-propose- state-depose

Ravi Kumar Gupta | Sustainability & CSR | Ex- Ambuja Cements | Ex- AKDN | XISS

Group based irrigation systems and Lifting water from existing rivers through group based lift irrigation systems can also be a sustainable solution.

M Kiran Kumar

There are some good experiences from Andhra Pradesh under Indira Jala Prabha programme and APFAMGS programme

Sunil Kumar Shrivastava | Senior Technical Advisor

Many parts in India farmers pay for water for irrigation from bore well owner in the village per hour basis just like hiring tractor services. As farmers pays the money on per hour basis they tends to optimise use of water, not over irrigate their fields. 

Subrata Singh

This is optimal use, but not an institutional mechanism to manage groundwater. Need to look for institutional ways - a farmer should be able to access his/her quota.

Soumya Ranjan

Collectivisation comes with collective decision making or forced central decision making process. Our farm sector lacks this force. I'll take different examples for putting it in simple words i.e. a housing society or municipal corporation uses a single water source for drinking water. We can take the examples of JJM also. This clearly indicates the collective decision made by an agency or an institution for the single source of water supply.

Sadly, we are far behind this level of collective action in the farm sector in India even after having many FPOs and examples. This may require a strong policy reform (forced collectivisation) or huge awareness at scale for single/limited source irrigation water supply systems in villages.

If you look at the traditional water usage and sharing patterns among the farmers and communities; it's a shared resource but now became exclusively private with the changing agriculture practice and coverage. Thank you!

Soumya Ranjan

Another interesting example I have seen in Odisha and Jharkhand is "people often pay rent for water pumps @hourly basis but nobody thinks about the charges for ground water." So there is a need to shift the value preposition and it requires more deeper thoughts!

Johnson Topno

Communitization and collectivisation is the way to sustainable development.

PRAN RANJAN

Old story.. In purulia long back shgS supported several community pond supported irrigation systems to farmers group.. When banks were not ready to give credit to those groups.. Contact jamgoria sevabtata

Nishant Kumar

With dark zones spreading like wild fire in at least in places like Jharkhand isn't it time to analyse the redundancy of borewell method and the threat it poses to the water security of much of the rainfed areas? Maybe collectivization around dug wells rather than bore wells remain the only sustainable model along with groundwater education / budgeting as a common goal. 

Shiv Singh

I think this is due to the lack of shared wisdom and collective actions and lack of institutional mechanisms in place to promote democratic decision making towards sustainable approaches …well that FES is having all that in place in their operational areas 

No one actually organised FPOs to take care of larger governance processes and confined themselves to only establish and promote the value chain systems towards produce price realisation 

This might be a topic of debate that how we can ensure integration among different traditional and self evolved institutions exists in a particular habitation with the crafted institution and how to ensure the shared vision, accountability, ownership and collective approaches

Sintu Chakma

To get probable answers as to why it's challenging for any village community to get collectivised and take such actions, we need to delve deeper into the socio-economic, historical and political setups that operate in villages. For instance, 'village' is not homogenous. Several communities with varied perspectives and different socio-political and economic status live in villages. Traditional issues, you can name any (caste, class, gender etc), still exist. Ignoring these contextual factors and expecting villagers to get collectivised shall be utopian thinking. Selfless leaders, those who really envision village as a whole by overcoming own personal prejudices, are rare (such as Anna Hazare). Village is connected with the larger regional or national narratives.

If we are to really facilitate faster development in villages, interventions at multiple levels are necessary. National or regional narratives that embodies universality must be promoted and adopted. Selfless leaders within the village need to be nurtured. Village community as a whole must be sensitised about possible quantitative and qualitative benefits by getting collectivised and taking collective decisions and actions. 

Jitendra Rai

Aahar Pyne traditional irrigation system in South Bihar can be referred. 

Chandramani Sahu

Why are we so called civilised peoples digging on farmers? In the cities most of the families have an individual bore well for personal use though there is a public water supply system. 

We are also doing this. WHY???????