The Hindu Business Line : NDC panel for revamping irrigation benefit scheme

FARM FOCUS: (From left) The Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar; the Planning Commission member, Dr Abhijit Sen; and the Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, during the 2nd meeting of the NDC sub-committee on agriculture and related issues in New Delhi on Wednesday. - Rajeev Bhatt

New Delhi April 18 The NDC Sub-Committee on Agriculture and Related Issues is reported to have favoured relaxation in norms of Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIPB) funding and restructuring the AIPB with a view to better monitoring and quicker returns on the investments and ensure completion of large number of ongoing projects by the States.

The NDC Sub-Committee, under the Chairmanship of the Union Minister of Agriculture, Food & Consumer Affairs, Mr Sharad Pawar, met here today and discussed a couple of working group reports on Agriculture for the 11th Plan.

The deliberations of today's meeting would be forwarded to the National Development Council (NDC) meet on agriculture to be convened by the Prime Minister late next month.

Decreasing trend

Stating that utilisation of irrigation potential created over the Plan period through major and medium projects shows a decreasing trend, it said the utilisation gap (6.04 million hectares) at the end of the Ninth Plan was of the order of 16.30 per cent. This is a matter of concern as the cost of creating irrigation potential is Rs 1.2 lakh per hectare during the Ninth Plan and thus an amount of Rs 72,000 crore remains blocked.

The irrigation potential created through major, medium and minor irrigation so far is 99.31 million ha by March 2005, against which the utilisation is 83.39 million ha.

Main causes

It said the main causes of the gap include unreliability of water supply at the outlet due to system deficiencies, inefficient on-farm water management practices, faulty design of outlets and preferring water intensive crops in disregard to envisaged optimal cropping pattern.

Hence, the Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) approach is needed in command area development. Providing legal framework for PIM (only 10 States have enacted proper legal framework so far) and strengthening Water Users Association (WUAs) by involving them in collection of water charges allowing part/full retention has to be adopted, the report has suggested.

"Community sprinkler through WUAs should be promoted in irrigation commands with a view to strengthening PIM rather than giving subsidy to the individual farmers," it suggested. So far, no norms or guidelines for identifying a project as National Project have been decided, but the parameters for such projects should include that it must be having one lakh ha and catering to irrigation needs of drought prone or tribal areas.

The Central Government might provide liberal grant for national projects but the prime responsibility of resource generation should rest with the Board for planning, execution and O&M of the project. It further favoured linking of intra-State river basins.

On the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), which has since been notified, the States would have to develop coordination mechanism to avail guidance from NRAA, it noted.

Annual growth target

Referring to the 11th Plan target of an average annual growth target of 4 per cent from 2 per cent now, it said that about half of this, that is, 1 per cent additional growth is likely as a result of the new Plan programmes, including Bharat Nirman, already initiated since 2004 and which have already increased the combined Plan expenditure of Centre and States on agriculture and irrigation by over 60 per cent in real terms.

The remaining one per cent additional growth would need to come from better resources utilisation and large private investment. Overall, agricultural investment would need to be about 16 per cent of agricultural GDP, with public investment contributing 4-5 per cent during the 11th Plan to increase the share of agriculture to 4 per cent.

Agriculture primarily being a State subject, the States will have to make higher investment. In the incremental investment envisaged in agriculture, the Centre and the States would have to contribute almost equally, the report said.

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