ABSTRACT
‘Everything you tell us to do costs more; how do we know we will get it back?’ But if you talk to India's peasant producers about water, they will listen. Under the conditions of low rainfall and a long period of drought which prevail over wide areas, ryots have no incentive to produce more than their subsistence requirement. The biggest single factor increasing employment and output, they claim, is water for irrigation over the greater part of the year.
