Groundwater irrigation reduces overall poverty but increases socioeconomic vulnerability in a semiarid region of southern India

Abstract

The development of irrigation is generally considered an efficient way to reduce poverty in rural areas, although its impact on the inequality between farmers is more debated. In fact, assessing the impact of water management on different categories of farmers requires resituating it within the different dimensions of the local socio-technical context. We tested this hypothesis in a semi-arid area in Karnataka, South India, where groundwater irrigation was introduced five decades ago. Using the conceptual framework of comparative agriculture, based on farmers’ interviews, we built a farm typology, traced the trajectories of farm types over the last decades and assessed their current technical and economic performances. Our results show that the differentiation of farm trajectories since the 1950s has been linked with the development of groundwater irrigation, interplaying with their initial assets, and the evolution of the national and local contexts. We highlight the mechanisms by which irrigation indeed reduces poverty but engenders fragilities, particularly for poor households, whose situation was aggravated by the depletion of water resources over the last two decades. Finally, this extensive understanding of the agrarian context allowed us to formulate and assess the potential of different ways forward, including irrigation technology, change in cropping or livestock systems, land tenure, and value added distribution. As such, this analysis would be of major interest to policy makers involved in reforming the agricultural context for better agricultural water management.

Constraints Faced by the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) Beneficiaries in Adoption of Drip Irrigation System in Tamil Nadu

“…The above findings were in accordance with the findings (9) who also reported that high cost of equipment, requirement of additional tank, non -availability spare parts, poor subsidy provision' , and 'high cost of liquid fertilizer' were the major constraints in adoption of drip irrigation technology. https://www.indjst.org/…”

Local infrastructure, rural households' resilience capacity and poverty: evidence from panel data for Southeast Asia

“…This study contributes to the filling of the following research gaps. First, rich findings are attained for irrigation-related infrastructure (Adetoro et al ., 2022; Biru et al ., 2020; Fischer et al ., 2022). However, rural infrastructure includes a broader range of facilities such as roads, electricity and information and communication technology (ICT).…”

Neither Corporate, Nor Family: The Indian “Patronal” Farm

“…While the agrarian reforms introduced in the decades following India's independence undoubtedly allowed farmers and former tenants to formally own private property, and ended the taxation system that existed earlier, there was no large-scale distribution of land, and numerous families, mostly from lower castes, remained landless. Cultivated land is hence very unequally distributed among cultivators (Figure 2), alongside a large contingent of landless farming households accounting for about 40% of India's (Lucas, 2014;Tessier and Taghavi, 2019;Fischer et al, 2022) rural households (Rawal, 2008, based on NSS data). In the 2011 Census, for the first time, out of a total of 263 million farmers (including "marginal" workers), the number of agricultural laborers (144 million) surpassed the number of cultivators (119 million) (Dorin and Aubron, 2016: Figure 3).…”