Irrigation Ashutosh Dikshit Iim Shillong

‘I’RRIGATION for ‘I’NDIA - A Sustainable Approach

‘I’gnite Round of Ashwamedha ‘09

-Ashutosh Dikshit -IIM SHILLONG

Food for thought..

“With the current rate of consumption of resources, we will need the capacity of 16 earths to sustain mankind by 2108…”

Living on the Edge • Of India’s annual environmental damage of $9.7 billion, $7 billion was due to air and water pollution • Rampant industrial water pollution due to nearly 3 million small and medium-size enterprises in the country

• Untreated and under-treated effluent cause severe ecological degradation and water contamination • <30% of population have access to safe drinking water • Area under irrigation 8,26,25,000 hectares, though not uniformly distributed (2006) • Highly dependent on monsoons - displaying erratic patterns increasing owing to climate change Source: www.indiastat.com

Back to the roots to give us the shoots -Traditional methods • Irrigation not at the cost of endangering the environment • Adapting and Adopting wisdom over the ages • Improvisation for making them highly replicable • Making the initiative sustainable

Exploring the North East for the answer.. • Use of bamboo pipes to irrigate plantations across Meghalaya • Tapping the resource at the source • In practice for over 200 years

• Naturally perfected: – 20 liters per minute entering at source – 20 drops per minute at site of the plant

Harnessing Nature • The principle of gravity governs Bamboo pipe distribution • Pipe positions of various sections guide rate of flow • Around 5 stages of distribution

• Collective maintenance from the community

Improvisations suggested • Avoiding total run off into the water table • Water Harvesting as a substitute feeder to bamboo pipes • Use of Bio degradable polymer sheets to create water bodies in open areas • Creation of similar water harvesting reserves in individual farms as reserves • The above mechanism can be replicated in other terrains as well – Simple mechanics (for artificial elevation) can combine with bamboo distribution

Sustainability ‘of’ and ‘for’ the initiative • Raw Material used is natural and eco friendly • Apportioning of labor and resources from the NREGA scheme for pan India implementation • Encouraging corporate houses to take up CSR initiatives associated with Irrigation • Govt. should Incentivize indigenous innovations • Implementing the initiatives via the Darbars (in the North East) and Panchayats (Rest of India) • Demonstrate the returns a la the model in the movie Swades to obtain stakeholders’ buy-in

Participatory Approach E m p o w e r m e n t

Government

Darbars/ Panchayat

Corporate CSR

Sustainable Irrigation

Foundation of Radical and Incremental Innovation

S e l f R e l i a n c e

ROI Calculation – Ballpark figures • Lack of irrigation facilities forces farmers/family members to travel long distances to collect water • Cost of Bamboo – effectively negligible • Time spent in travel could otherwise be productively utilized

Way Forward • Localized innovation to be made replicable • Traditional methods will continue to be of high relevance • Higher rates of adoption should be encouraged and propagated by stakeholders • The Green Revolution replication of the past should be taken into the future

Thank You