I’m so engaged on water and forest protection. With this goal, I have made a youtube video, in portuguese, claiming our challeges.
So, I would like to ask you to publish it in your blog.

Take a look of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-theV5nPQwY

The lyrics, translated, are:

Water, source of life
Divinal stuff, criated by God

Water, it is you that bring the life for plants and animals
Water, it is you that make our rosebuches button their flowers

Chorus:
Lets to preserve our rivers, the green and woodlands of our country

Thanks, Maria Aparecida

1. Among all states in India, West Bengal has one of the most extensive groundwater markets. As per NSSO survey data from 1976-77 and 1997-98, upto 68% of farming households in Bengal purchase water from others. Please find attached a paper that was published in Hydrogeology Journal that gives a spatio-temporal analysis of groundwater markets in India. Also, much of this market was private groundwater market, some other institutional forms such as panchayat ownership of pumps and panchayat regulation of water prices were seen, but private water markets still worked out to be best alternative.

2. Groundwater markets in West Bengal during the time of high flat rate tariff (mid 1990s to 2007) were highly competitive. This is because of 2 reasons. First, pump owners themselves are small and marginal farmers owning less than 1 ha of land. Now they were required to pay electricity bills ranging from Rs. 5000 to Rs. 10,000 per annum for a 5 HP pump. However, the amount of land they owned and electricity bill that they had to pay did not justify self-irrigation alone. They were under pressure to sell water to recover the electricity charges. The water buyers knew that pump owners were under a pressure to sell water and they took advantage and negotiated water prices downwards. So while tariff increased from Rs. 1100/year in 1991 to Rs. 10800 in 2007, charges for water selling increased from Rs. 200/bigha in 1991 to Rs. 600/bigha in 2007 – an increase of only 3 times. Further details in a paper published in Energy Policy in 2007 (Mukherji_Energy Policy 2007.pdf; Mukherji_paper.pdf ). That water markets produced equitable results is shown by the fact that water sellers and buyers grew exactly the same crops and had similar incomes. So not owning an electric pump was not a major disadvantage. Indeed it was a buyer’s market as they dictated terms and conditions of water trade and pump owners had to oblige.

3. West Bengal had a good systems of electricity bill collection, there was not much default, it farmers defaulted, then they were disconnected. There was no subsidy for farmers and farmers paid almost the full cost of service. Only 10-15% of farmers had electric tubewells, pace of electrification of tubewells was very low and declined even further since early 2000.

4. That rates of electrification was low did not matter so much in mid 1990s, but since early 2000s as diesel subsidy was gradually removed and diesel became more and more expensive. It was then that water buyers from diesel pumps stopped growing boro paddy and vegetables – two water intensive crops which fetched reasonably good returns compared to everything else. After a while, even diesel pump owners found it difficult to grow boro paddy and shifted to rainfed crops. Income variability increased.

5. In 2007, metering was introduced. Not a bad strategy in itself since it is mandatory under Electricity Act of 2003, and it helps in energy accounting. But energy accounting was not such a big concern, because only 6% of electricity in the state goes to agriculture and only agriculture was unmetered, rest were all metered. But anyway, all tubewells were metered and we did an initial impact evaluation and found that water buyers were adversely affected. It was published in Energy Policy in 2009 (Mukherji_Energy Policy 2009.pdf). Also a recent study we are doing shows that water buyers have reduced area under boro paddy and have moved to rainfed crop and number of hours of water sold has reduced by over 30-50%, more so in metered villages than in non-metered one. Metering has removed incentive to sell water and overnight the nature of water markets changed from buyers to sellers market. The first to lose access to water were small and marginal water buying farmers.

6. So overall there is now a distinction between farmers in terms of what they can grow. Only electric pump owners can grow water intensive boro paddy, which in spite of everything, fetches better market price than anything else. Water buyers are now largely condemned to reduce their area under boro crop and move to rainfed crops such as kharif season rice and other rabi season dry crops like lentils and oilseeds. This distinctive in a state where there is plenty of groundwater just does not make sense.

7. What makes electrification difficult is the policy of full cost recovery from farmers and also the policy of prior permission for SWID as per the GW Act. SWID officials are known to reject applications for new permits on flimsy grounds and in some North Bengal districts where less than 20% of GW is extracted, rejection rates for new application is as high as 80% or more. This is a good example how GW laws are more likely to create problems for farmers than anything else. The same is happening in AP. We need to do much beyond than legislate laws. A badly implemented law is worse than no law at all, especially when at receiving end are poor and marginal farmers.

8. In 85% of villages water table is within 10 meter from ground level and in 65% of observation wells, water levels are constant, in 20% they are rising and 15% they are falling. Due to high rainfall, much of the groundwater is recharged. But additional recharge through rehabilitation of ponds will make sure that additional water will be recharged and we can possibly achieve 100% recharge rates. Drawing down water tables in summer months leads to additional recharge and hence is a good strategy. This strategy also allows growing of boro paddy crop – crop whose peak irrigation season in Feb-April. Rainfall of 2000 plus mm helps in recharge.

9. Give flat topography of much of the state, surface water storage structures are problematic. Here extensive aquifers can be proactively managed for storing of excess rainwater and in the process, it can also reduce flood intensity. There are studies from Bangladesh that shows that intensification of groundwater irrigation led to less intense flooding event. That is simply Ganges Water Machine in operation. And the people who are driving this machine are the millions of small farmers who have invested their own private money in digging shallow tubewells and in the process growing additional foodgrains and also creating positive externalities in form of reduction in rejected recharge and flood control. Bangladesh became food self-sufficient in 1999 thanks to their policy of liberalization of pump import, doing away of spacing restriction, introduction of diesel subsidy and also government support in terms of providing emergency electricity even by taking power from urban centres like Dhaka. Bangladesh, even after 30 plus years of really intensive groundwater use has not seen any drastic decline in water tables except in urban areas like Dhaka and Chittagong.

10. The only major concern in my view is that of arsenic. What needs to be done is to take this threat seriously, provide arsenic free drinking water in threatened villages, provide folate supplements to people with nutritional deficiencies and run an information campaign – all three things that seems to have worked in Bangladesh. In critical arsenic blocks, discourage farmers for growing leafy vegetables, as leafy vegetables uptake arsenic.

I am attaching a number of papers that I have published over the course of last 7-8 years – of all them are against dominant national discourse of over-exploitation and scarcity and the reason why such a discourse took such firm roots in Bengal. My diagnosis is partly politics of policy making (political ecology explanation, see attached paper HJ_2006_1.pdf) and partly lack of researchers who have done extensive fieldwork in the state and have explored these issues. However, my views are quite in resonance with scholars who have worked in Bangladesh, scholars such as Richard Palmer Jones and Mahboub Hossain of IRRI and BRAC. In Bangladesh, they have listed shallow tubewells as one of the “miracles” that has helped feed Bangladesh (published in Million Fed by IFPRI in 2010). I am convinced that there is something inherently wrong with policies if farmers withdrawing groundwater from less than 30 feet deep in West Bengal have to pay Rs. 50/hour as pumping cost vis-à-vis a farmer lifting water from 400 feet at free of cost (as in Punjab and Karnataka) or if farmers in West Bengal are discouraged from using groundwater when the fact is long term table table trends shows constant trend in majority of wells in post monsoon season with some 20% wells even showing rising trend, or that something is wrong when even though floating on groundwater, water buyers lose access to water simply because government chooses to change its tariff policy. This story is predominantly a story of 3/4th of Bengal underlain by alluvial aquifers – of course there are some regional variations, but not much as one may think. I am sure that fieldwork that we will eventually do as a team will show. Story of rest 1/4th of the state with hard rock and sedimentary aquifers and with low rainfall is different and is more akin to story of hard rock aquifers elsewhere, but also here average rainfall is higher at 1200-1500 mm and it makes all the difference.

References

Mukherji, A., B. Das, N. Majumdar, N.C. Nayak, R.R. Sethi and B.R. Sharma (2009), Metering of agricultural power supply in West Bengal, India: Who gains and who loses? Energy Policy: 37 (12): 5530-5539. ISI ranked.

Mukherji, A. (2008), Spatio-temporal analysis of markets for groundwater irrigation services in India, 1976-77 to 1997-98, Hydrogeology Journal, 16(6): 1077-1087, ISI ranked

Mukherji, A. (2007), ‘The energy-irrigation nexus and its impact on groundwater markets in eastern Indo-Gangetic basin: Evidence from West Bengal, India’, Energy Policy, Vol. 35(12): 6413-6430. ISI ranked

Mukherji, A (2007), ‘Implications of alternative institutional arrangements in groundwater sharing: Evidence from West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 42 (26): 2543-2551

Mukherji, A. (2006), Political ecology of groundwater: The contrasting case of water abundant West Bengal and water scarce Gujarat, India, Hydrogeology Journal 14(3):392-406. ISI ranked.

Mukherji, A. (2004): ‘Groundwater Market in Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra Basin: A Review of Theory and Evidence’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 39(31): 3514-3520