ABSTRACT
India is generally characterized as having a low and erratic rainfall, and the adaptation of people to such a severe climate has been categorized broadly into two: those related to the social system and those related to water use technologies. The former mode of adaptation took the form of the highly flexible nature of social systems, defined variously as the mirasi system, the system of entitlements, vatan, and other terms, that functioned during the pre-colonial period. However, the systems that had offered ‘multi-layered safety nets’ were destroyed by the colonial land system, the so-called raiyatwari system. A completely different social relation based exclusively upon landholding emerged, resulting in the loss of sustainability.
Hence there remained only adaptation through developing water use technologies. Exploiting water for irrigation was assigned by far the most important role to stabilize and intensify agricultural production in the society. After Independence, India achieved a rapid development in irrigation, especially via the diffusion of energized wells (wells with diesel-engines or electricity-motors). By 2013–14, the percentage of net irrigated area to net sown area jumped to 48 percent and the share of well irrigation became 62 percent, with canals 24 percent, 3 percent by tanks, and 11 percent by others.
The energized wells were the most important input for the successful Green Revolution in India after the late 1960s. By the mid-1990s India finally solved the persistent food problem, but is now facing an interrelated problem of groundwater depletion and energy crisis, which jeopardizes food production base. The combination of these problems, which is called the food–water–energy nexus, has far-reaching consequences for sustainable development.
The introduction of the specific electricity tariff system, or the flat tariff, adopted by the state governments in India in the decades since the mid-1970s, was the key element that brought about the nexus. It provided farmers with a strong incentive to use electricity recklessly for lifting groundwater. The State Electricity Boards (SEBs) suffered from severe financial crisis, which caused financial deficiencies for investing in new power plants and/or for maintaining the existing power infrastructure properly. The wider problem has been exemplified by a limited and unreliable power supply that causes frequent outage of power, unstable voltage and frequency, etc. The ill effects extend to all the economic sectors including industry and commerce.
The food–water–energy nexus involves a clear regional difference. In the arid/semi-arid western half of the Indian subcontinent, where groundwater resources are scarce, there have been severe aggravations. By contrast, in the humid eastern half of the subcontinent, including Nepal Terai and Bangladesh, the issue is much less severe, not only because of the abundance of groundwater there but also because most of the tube wells are diesel-operated as a result of the delay of rural electrification. These differences make the basic policy agenda quite different among regions. While it is imperative to solve the severe and complicated issue of the nexus in the arid/semi-arid area, promoting rural electrification and expanding the well-irrigated area is necessary in the humid area to boost agricultural production and to accelerate rural poverty alleviation.
By elaborating more on the regional differences, the editors consider the possible policy alternatives in their respective chapters.
