India’s 6th Minor Irrigation Census:
The Ministry of Jal Shakti has released the 6th census of minor irrigation schemes (with reference year 2017-18), shedding light on the state of irrigation practices across India.
- So far, five censuses were conducted in 1986-87, 1993-94, 2000-01, 2006-07, and 2013-14.
Highlights of the Report:
- A total of 23.14 million minor irrigation (MI) schemes have been reported in the country.
- Among these, 21.93 million (94.8%) are groundwater (GW) schemes, and 1.21 million (5.2%) are Surface Water (SW) schemes.
- Dug-wells have the highest share in MI schemes followed by shallow tube-wells, medium tube-wells and deep tube-wells.
- The 6th MI census recorded an increase of about 1.42 million MI schemes compared to the previous census.
- Nationally, GW schemes saw a 6.9% increase, while SW schemes increased by 1.2%.
- Uttar Pradesh leads in MI schemes in India, followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
- Maharashtra is the leading State in dug-wells, surface flow and surface lift schemes.
- Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab are the leading States in shallow tube-wells, medium tube-wells and deep tube-wells, respectively.
- In SW schemes, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand have the highest share.
- Approximately 96.6% of MI schemes are under private ownership.
- Among GW schemes, 98.3% are owned by private entities, and in SW schemes, this share is 64.2%.
- For the first time, data on the gender of MI scheme owners was collected.
- 18.1% of individually owned schemes are owned by women.
- Around 60.2% of schemes are financed through a single source.
- Own savings of individual farmers contribute significantly to single-source financing (79.5%).
- 39.8% of schemes have more than one source of finance.
