ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the continued promotion of drip irrigation through state subsidies and donor-funded projects, on the basis of claims of water savings that are rarely backed up with evidence, and despite that it enables the intensification and extension of irrigated agriculture and in fine actually leads to increased pressure on water resources. Groundwater is often portrayed as an overexploited resource, especially through pump irrigation in semi-arid regions. Farmers find groundwater attractive as it is 'at hand' through private tube-wells, as opposed to the limited water resources in collective irrigation systems. The measured decline in water tables in groundwater-based irrigated areas is strangely enough hardly ever associated with the increased fraction of irrigated area equipped with drip irrigation. The paradox is that declining groundwater levels are often advanced as arguments to subsidize drip irrigation, even though it is increasingly clear that it is precisely the increased water productivity allowed by drip irrigation that is responsible for the drawdown of aquifers.
