Kapil Subramanian – Planning Irrigation in Nehruvian India

Irrigation, unlike in TVA, was the central concern of water management in Nehruvian Indian as it had
been in the colonial period- the rising importance of power production and flood control is what led
Indian to invest heavily in dams in the immediate post-war period. In this period – large dams were a
prerogative for irrigation more than power.

large surface irrigation systems accounted for lion's share of investment in irrigation during the
1950s - Nehruvian India however also scaled up British efforts at small-scale irrigation

Even prior to the green revolution period starting in the late 1960s, provincial governments went
over and above, central left-leaning technocrats to proliferate irrigation schemes in their states
stretching resources thin by the mid-1950s.

between 1950 and 1980, by far the most impressive growth took place in irrigation from
groundwater and the total area irrigated by tubewells tripled in this period.

Till 1963-64 – canals led the growth in irrigation contributing to over half of the increase in the
irrigated area –After 1964 groundwater irrigation grew at a spectacular rate of 6.6% compared to
canal irrigation growing only at 1.8% while tanks and other sources in absolute decline – in 1950-51,
total irrigated area on count of ground water stood at 29% and increased to 46% by 1979-1980 and
continued to grow in subsequent decades – increased spurred on by growth of tubewells which
contributed 4% of the acreage in 1963-64 and then rose to 24% n 16 years with the area irrigated by
tubewells increasing by 8 times.

1rst FYP: The Planning Commission was not necessarily an enthusiast for the large irrigation schemes
foisted upon the first plan (by way of constructing large storage? in the offing since the late colonial
period when some of these were conceived – the MPRVPs) - By the time of the first FYP, large
schemes were emphasized - because most of them had already been committed to – the Plan was to
bring 19.7 million acres under irrigation, of which about 11.3 million acres were to come from minor
irrigation and the rest from major irrigation works – Nehru himself was an enthusiast for small scale
irrigation projects – but state governments often demanded and got them, thus marking how even
central planning had to respond to the exigencies of state level provincial politics even in these early
years.

Irrigation in Crisis: By the late 1950s large irrigation projects ran into several difficulties – cost and
schedule overruns on a monumental scale at times – too high targets set – both a failure to create
potential, i.e. structures to store and divert water being built – but also a failure of utilization, since
building field channels upto the cultivator’s fields (often a private responsibility) often not
accomplished.

By late 1950s, it is seen that of the projected 6 million acres to be irrigated, capacity created for
irrigating only 6.3 million acres and out of that only about 4 million acres actually utilized. (Reasons
given pg 122-123 why such under-utilization) – one main reason thought for this, other than the last-
mile task of connecting field channels, was that peasants reacted with their sowing patterns in
widely different ways that was often counted as a traditional drawback or cultural difference of sorts
– shift in intellectual landscape of development studies over the 1960s solidified this assumption.
Nehru – mentions ‘disease of giganticism’

2nd and 3rd FYP: 2ND PLAN developed a model by Mahalanobis based on GOSPLAN. – yet planning
commission could not prevent state government from taking up irrigation projects over
industrialization, etc. By 1957-58, Indian food grain production seemed to have dropped by 10%
causing apprehensions that Indian agriculture is still not drought-proof. Ford Foundation report
comes – India’s Food Crisis and Steps to Meet it – discourages large irrigation project investment,
calling instead for agricultural intensification using inputs like fertilizers, etc.

Third Plan: But even by the Third Plan regional demands led up to sanctioning of irrigation projects
w/o enough investigation.

Third Plan placed particular emphasis on the role of rural electrification in

irrigation alluding to private tubewells - at Rs 1.05 billion, the allocation for rural electrification for
the 5 years between 1961 and 1966 was higher than what had been spent on the same in the
preceding 10 years.

Questions of Public Finance: financial productivity or cost-benefit analysis – intangibles stressed by

newer discourses and institutions like NCAER. The latter debatable though – Krishnamachari – no
end to such benefits being deemed legitimate over and above financial productivity counts.

NCAER ON THE CONTRARY - Financial productivity test appropriate only for laissez faire colonial
economy and not for planned economy of welfare state - welfare test required investment in
overheads that were not amenable to marginalist analysis - what was required was total analysis of
social costs and benefits - cost-benefit analysis - methods adopted that were is use by the U.S. since
1950s – COMMITTEE MADE UP OF STATE GOVERNMENT AND CENTRAL GOVERNMNET MINISTERS
suggests the cost-benefit analysis in favour of NCAER – Recommendation accepted by the
government

Crisis is public finance brings large project investment to a halt – but cost-benefit analysis method
becomes a vehicle for renewed momentum with which new projects sanctioned in the 1970s. One
component of this approach entailed raising some of the costs from users/farmers – but this state
governments did not practice by not raising water rates – losses in irrigation projects continued –
“the question of who should pay for development which favoured the few refused to go away”