Irrigation of the Nation

The Big Dams-versus-Small Dams controversy would have been laid to rest long ago had there been greater public awareness of the unbelievably poor track record of large irrigation projects in India. But the true state of affairs in this sector-the so-called Major and Medium (M&M) sector of irrigation-has been systematically and deliberately hidden from the public by India´s Ministry of Water Resources (MWR).

For decades, the Ministry has pursued a one-point programme for the expansion of this sector unmindful of its consistently disappointing record. Year after year, write-ups in the glossy Annual Reports of the Ministry have taken care to refer glowingly to the M&M sector keeping out anything which might even remotely suggest its poor state of health.

But the truth has a way of asserting itself no matter how meticulously suppressed. Aware of the large gap between promise and performance, the authors of the Eighth Plan document (1992) were constrained to observe that “the biggest single malady of this sector right from the First Plan has been its continued tendency to start more and more projects, resulting in wanton proliferation of projects, thin spreading of resources and consequent time and cost overruns.”

These remarks, couched as they are in bland officialese, do not convey adequately the extent of the negligence in this sector. For that, one has to refer to the anguished speech made by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in July 1986 while inaugurating the State Irrigation Ministers´ Conference:

“The situation today is that since 1951, 246 big surface irrigation projects have been initiated. Only 65 out of these have been completed. One hundred and eighty-one are still under construction. This is not a happy state of affairs. We need some definitive thrusts from the projects that are started after 1970. Perhaps we can safely say that almost no benefit has come to the people from these projects. For 16 years, we have poured money out. The people have got nothing back, no irrigation, no water, no increase in production, no help in their daily life.”

Such an indictment by the country´s highest executive should have stopped the Ministry in its tracks and forced it to review its policies and practices. But the bureaucrats proceeded to treat the Prime Minister´s address as a non-event, so much so that they were blacked out of the Ministry´s Annual Report. This was unprecedented and administratively unpardonable, but, most surprisingly, it led to no repercussions. The Ministry´s audacity apparently had paid off, which emboldened it to continue its senseless policy of expanding the M&M sector as an end in itself-and not as a means towards the end of greater agricultural production.

Potential Created and Utilised

Only a thorough-going probe by a proper commission of enquiry can determine the full extent of the damage that the MWR´s policies have inflicted on the Indian economy, but one can safely assume that it is of staggering proportions. How easily this system lends itself to irresponsibility and deception is illustrated by looking at the situation which existed in 1990.

According to the 7th Plan document, the additional potential created by the M&M sector in the 35 years between 1950 to 1985 was 20.8 million hectares (mh). The document promised that an outlay of INR 11,556 crore during the 7th Plan period would result in an additional potential of 4.3 mh, thus bringing the cumulative total in 1990 to 25.1 mh.

However, after dithering over the matter for some years, the MWR finally admitted in 1993 that what was actually achieved by 1990 was a potential of only 20.2 mh, or 4.9 mh less than the target. It also admitted that although instead of gain, a loss of potential from 20.8 to 20.2 mh took place during 1985-1990, an outlay of 1NR 11,207 crore had nevertheless been utilised by the sector during these years. (1NR 1 Crore = USD 286,000)

A major factor behind such debacles in India´s M&M sector is the curious yardstick that has traditionally been used to describe its performance-that of “potential created” rather than the potential actually achieved by physically taking water to unirrigated lands. While the latter is a tangible asset which can be verified on the ground, the former is merely a calculation, to which only project engineers are privy and which can therefore be exaggerated at random.

Apart from enabling the M&M sector to inflate its performance to justify unviable projects, this system of reporting has also made it possible for the Ministry to shirk the responsibility of actually taking water to the farmer´s field. Thus, the small distribution channels that actually perform this function beyond the last outlet operated by the canal authorities have traditionally been the responsibility of either the farmers or the agricultural departments to build and maintain. This arrangement obviously encouraged the M&M sector to make its false claims.

In 1990, a large gap existed between “potential created” and “potential utilised”. According to the MWR, this gap was only of the order of 4.4 mh but considering how often it has been changing its performance figures, it would be much safer to go by what the Land Use Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture has to say in this regard. According to it, the gap in 1990 was not 4.4 mh but 9 mh, even if we go by the MWR´s reduced figure of 20.2 mh. However, had the MWR not written off a potential of 4.9 mh in 1993, this gap would have been as big as 13.9 mh. We have it on authority of the MWR´s own figures, that the average cost of creating potential in the M&M sector during 1992-95 was around INR 60,000 per hectare. This means that the value at the current levels of the potential that lay unused in 1990 is at least INR 54,000 crore and would have been around INR 84,000 crore had the MWR not revised its figures in 1993. The enormity of the failure of the M&M sector to deliver becomes apparent when we consider that the total investment made in it between 1950 and 1990 was INR 28,292 crore.

There are two other indicators of the shambles that the MWR has made of its work. First, the “replacement cost” at current prices of the 4.9 mh of potential that has been written off by the Ministry works out at around INR 30,000 crore, at the very least. Second, since, according to the Land Use Statistics, the net additional area brought under irrigation by the M&M sector during 1985-1990 was no more than 0.262 mh, the average cost of providing water to one hectare of land during the 7th plan period was INR 4.24 lakhs, which is a price far beyond the capacity of a poor country like India.

Even more disturbing than this development is the brazen manner in which the Ministry has tried to hide its record from public view. Throughout the 7th Plan period, the Annual Reports maintained that the Plan target of additional potential would be achieved by 1990. However, in 1990-91, the very next year, it was quietly, indeed surreptitiously revealed (not in the text of the Report, it is important to note, but in one of its statistical tables) that there would be a shortfall of 1.9 mh.

Two years later, another change of figures in a statistical table-the Annual Report for 1992-93-revealed that the shortfall would be on the order of not 1.9 million hectares but 4.9 mh. No reference to this shortfall was made in the text of the Report nor any explanation whatsoever given for why it had happened. Since all subsequent Reports have also followed this same pattern, the average reader who only goes through texts of such publications will never suspect that something untoward has taken place in the M&M sector.

Intentions Not Honourable

That the Ministry knew it had done something unworthy is self-evident. Had its intentions been honourable, it would have boldly admitted its failure to achieve its targets and offered a credible explanation. In view of the size of the shortfall, the Ministry might have thought of publishing a white paper on the subject. The fact that it did none of these things and instead tried to sweep the matter under the carpet shows how desperately anxious the Ministry is to protect the M&M sector from adverse criticism and to perpetuate the misconception that it is doing well it its efforts to enhance Indian irrigation.

Even after the shocking situation was exposed in the national press by this writer in 1994 and again in 1995, the Ministry remained silent, refusing to utter a word of explanation or apology. Such conduct is indeed not unexpected of a Ministry that was able, ten years ago, to cock a snook at the Prime Minister´s high office and get away with it.

Be that as it may, it is clear that the M&M sector and the Ministry of Water Resources need to be brought under control without further delay Some of the measures that readily suggest themselves are as follows:

—The policy of letting the MWR run almost exclusively by an engineering establishment that is sold on the M&M sector needs to be urgently revised.

—The practice of letting the M&M sector use the farcical yardstick of “potential created” for measuring its progress must be immediately discarded in favour of the more fool-proof and tangible yardstick of “potential utilised”.

—Considering that it costs a great deal of money to create potential, the revision of performance figures surreptitiously and without reference to the Finance Ministry was a reprehensible act for which responsibility must be fixed and suitable punishment awarded, even though some of the officers involved have now retired.

—In the absence of adequate information on the subject, it is not possible to accept even the MWR´s reduced 1990 figure of 20.2 mh at face value. The actual situation that exists in this field must be ascertained through an open inquiry, so that we know exactly where we stand today and the extent to which false claims have been made in the past.

—The further expansion of the M&M sector must be absolutely ruled out on financial grounds. The resources available to the country for the surface irrigation sector must be carefully husbanded and utilised in more productively-for example, for meeting the huge liabilities already created by this sector by way of unutilised potential, and for improving the admittedly poor quality of irrigation provided by it.

Attention must also be paid to long-outstanding problems like the premature siltation of reservoirs, the menace of water-logging and salination in command areas, and the rationalisation of inordinately low water rates levied on the farming sector which today cost the country something like INR 3000 crore per annum. In brief, consolidation, not expansion, must be the order of the day in this sector.

A well-known apologist for the M&M sector has in the pages of Himal South Asia recently described the critics of large dams and other projects as “romantics”. The above account would show that the shoe is on the other foot and that it is men of his ilk who deserve the epithet better.