Drip irrigation as a socio-technical configuration: policy design and technological choice in Western India

Misquitta, Karan; Birkenholtz, Trevor

doi:10.1080/02508060.2020.1858696

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Instead of acquiescing to maximising rice production goals for export, I showed how groundwater expansion in Telangana was a product of bottom-up, decentralised and private infrastructural aspirational investments by smallholder farmers over time and space in remaking dryland landscapes for rice consumption and food security. The use of groundwater for food security and not cash crop cultivation for exports follows a different trajectory of agrarian transformation to the existing literature on groundwater expansion in India (Birkenholtz, 2022; Misquitta and Birkenholtz, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Creating the ‘Rice Bowl of India’: Examining the political economy of groundwater-led agrarian transformation in dryland India

Karamchedu

2023

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This article explores the political economy of groundwater-led agrarian transformation in dryland India through the expansion of groundwater irrigation and rice production since the 1990s. Within this process, I speak to aspirations by subsistence farmers and imaginaries by state governments for agricultural commercialisation via expanding and investing in irrigation infrastructures. In India, this has largely been driven by private and decentralised investments by smallholder farmers. Theoretically adding to the literature on water infrastructures, development aspirations and groundwater governance, I find how farmer aspirations of rice cultivation and associations of the crop with food security and status drove the debt-laden and capital-intensive rapid adoption of groundwater irrigation in dryland Telangana, aided by specific discourses and electricity subsidies policies post the formation of the newest state in India in 2014. I find that political discourses of historical inequalities over water in the struggle for state formation of Telangana in 2014 mobilised electricity subsidies as a key lever to re-imagine the state as a rice bowl of India through groundwater expansion, producing uneven political economy and ecological repercussions for farmers. This article finds that while rice production increased in a short period in Telangana, it came at the expense of widespread well failures and indebtedness at the farmer and village level colliding with the fragile semi-arid climate and hard rock aquifer setting in the state, deepening distress and decay from depleted water infrastructures and failed aspirations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Creating the ‘Rice Bowl of India’: Examining the political economy of groundwater-led agrarian transformation in dryland India

Karamchedu

2023

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…This focus also obfuscates the political economic conditions under which farmers make technology adoption decisions. For instance, farmers may adopt drip irrigation to expand production and increase profits, rather than to reduce water consumption (Birkenholtz, 2017; Misquitta and Birkenholtz, 2021). It also obscures the way that the adoption of the technology is both dependent upon and transforms gendered labor burdens.…”

Section: Infrastructuring Drip Irrigation: Assembly Efficiency and Ge...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I explore these questions through a case study from northwestern India, where nearly 90 percent of groundwater withdrawals go towards irrigation (Shah, 2009). This has resulted in severe groundwater overdraft and has prompted the Indian Central Government to offer significant subsidies to farmers to adopt drip irrigation (Misquitta and Birkenholtz, 2021). India currently leads the world in both drip-irrigated area with 2 million hectares and in its rate of expansion (111-fold over the past two decades) (National Geographic, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet its success tends to generate a myopic focus on the technology itself, obscuring its actual performance in the field from the social relations in which it is embedded (see Venot, 2017: for a critique). For instance, critical scholarship demonstrates that the expansion of drip irrigation has been driven by an assemblage of actors including government subsidies (Malik et al, 2018;Pullabhotla et al, 2012), development donors (Venot et al, 2014), equipment manufacturers (Misquitta and Birkenholtz, 2021) and through private farmers' initiatives (Birkenholtz, 2017). So too, research has also shown that the introduction of drip irrigation exacerbates gendered social relations (Bossenbroek et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Infrastructuring drip irrigation: The gendered assembly of farmers, laborers and state subsidy programs

Birkenholtz

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This paper examines the relationship between the diffusion of drip irrigation technology, state subsidy programs to encourage its adoption by farmers, and gendered labor dynamics. Drip irrigation is promoted globally as a water conserving agricultural innovation that enhances water-use and productive efficiency by increasing yields with less water, while freeing up “saved” water for other uses. India leads the world in its rate of expansion and in total area. Relying on analyses of government drip irrigation policies and ethnographic field research conducted between 2015 and 2020 in the Indian state of Rajasthan, I find the successful diffusion of drip irrigation is dependent upon state subsidies, farmer adoption decisions and the availability of female labor. I engage conceptual work on water conservation technologies, and from feminist political ecology and infrastructure studies to argue: (1) the diffusion of drip irrigation is better understood as a gendered process of infrastructuring; which (2) is an ongoing process of the assembly of state subsidies, the aggregation of decentralized individual farmer adoption decisions, and the availability of on-demand, underpaid female labor; where (3) female laborers provide a “feminine labor subsidy” that produces productive efficiency gains and lends drip irrigation infrastructure its durability. Conceptualizing drip irrigation as a gendered process of infrastructuring, renders visible its emergent and gendered material politics. The conclusion discusses prospects for reassembling drip irrigation infrastructure in more materially just ways and its implications for the political ecology of water infrastructure.

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“…To enhance water resource use efficiency, some advanced irrigation technologies such as drip and micro-irrigation have been advocated for [21]. Subsidies and technical support approaches have been supplied by the governments of India, Australia, and China [22,23]. Large-scale farming, mechanized production, and advanced agricultural resource management practices have been encouraged by various policies; these include agricultural machinery subsidies and large-scale planting subsidies, which reduce agricultural labor costs [24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimization of Agricultural Resource Allocation among Crops: A Portfolio Model Analysis

Miao,

Liu,

Fan

et al. 2023

Land

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The portfolio model provides a new framework that enables farmers to make tradeoffs between the returns and risks of agricultural production. However, it has only been used in cost allocation among resources and in farmland allocation among crops at present. Thus, we conducted a portfolio model analysis based on an independent, mixed cross-section of data accounting for 1650 rural households in Minqin county, China, over a timescale of three years; the goal was to explore the feasibility and actuating extent of the portfolio model in optimizing the allocation of agricultural resources among crops other than farmland. The results showed that, by optimizing resource allocation among crops using a portfolio model, the return per unit resource of farmland, water, and labor increased by CNY 4.03 thousand per hectare, CNY 0.38 per cubic meter, and CNY 39.75 per day, without increasing risk, and with corresponding increases in use efficiency of 14.64%, 9.25%, and 13.55%, respectively, in the study area. Therefore, the portfolio model is a good tool for agricultural resource allocation optimization. Policy makers can manage agricultural resources according to their risk preference using this model. This study provides new insights into agricultural resource allocation and critical empirical evidence for return and risk management, as well as resource use efficiency improvement in agricultural production.

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Drip irrigation as a socio-technical configuration: policy design and technological choice in Western India

Cited by 10 publications

References 33 publications

Creating the ‘Rice Bowl of India’: Examining the political economy of groundwater-led agrarian transformation in dryland India

Creating the ‘Rice Bowl of India’: Examining the political economy of groundwater-led agrarian transformation in dryland India

Infrastructuring drip irrigation: The gendered assembly of farmers, laborers and state subsidy programs

Optimization of Agricultural Resource Allocation among Crops: A Portfolio Model Analysis

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