The Farmer Who Says Cotton Earns More

Net return per hectare

• Paddy–paddy: 1,42,000 − 96,000 = ₹46,000/ha.
• Paddy–cotton 2021: 1,68,000 − 1,02,000 = ₹66,000/ha.
• Paddy–cotton 2022: 84,000 − 1,02,000 = −₹18,000/ha (a loss).
• Two-year average for cotton: (66,000 − 18,000) ÷ 2 = ₹24,000/ha.

So on the farmer's own numbers, cotton's average net return is roughly half of paddy's, and it includes a year of outright loss.

Water productivity

• Paddy: 46,000 ÷ 1,850 mm = ₹24.9 net per mm per hectare.
• Cotton 2021: 66,000 ÷ 1,050 = ₹62.9/mm; cotton 2022: −18,000 ÷ 1,050 = −₹17.1/mm.
• Cotton saves 800 mm/ha/yr - about 43% of the water - but its money per millimetre is erratic.

Risk

Paddy has an institutional floor: MSP and assured procurement. Cotton has price volatility (a 50% swing between two years), no procurement backstop, and higher input cost (₹1,02,000 vs ₹96,000), so the loss year bites harder. Cotton is also the crop that fails first when the monsoon breaks in August.

Verdict. The farmer is right that cotton earns more in a good year and right that it saves water, which is the resource actually under threat. He is wrong that it earns more overall. The defensible choice is a partial shift - keep kharif paddy under canal supply, replace rabi paddy with a low-water crop, and put cotton only on the area whose risk he can carry. A whole-farm switch to cotton trades a secure ₹46,000 for a volatile ₹24,000 average.

The chain of causation

1. The canal delivers only July to October, so the rabi crop cannot be canal-fed. Because canal water is seasonal, the farmer has no choice but to lift groundwater for the second paddy.
2. Pumping is free and unscheduled, arriving 6–8 hours at night. Free, inconvenient power encourages flood irrigation when it does come rather than measured application - there is no incentive to economise and no ease in doing so.
3. The result is the observed fall: 8.9 − 6.2 = 2.7 m over about nine years, roughly 0.3 m/yr of decline. That is not yet a crisis but it is a clear trend, and it is fastest where the crop is most water-hungry.
4. The tail-end 40% deficit is part of the same cause, not a separate problem: head-reach farmers take canal water first and lift groundwater on top of it, while tail-enders get the residual flow and must pump deeper. The distributary has no rotation discipline.
5. The EC rise from 0.4 to 1.1 dS/m in the lower field is the local exception: that fieldponds tail water and has a shallower water table, so capillary rise plus evaporation concentrates salts at the surface. It is a drainage problem, localised in the lowest part of the holding.

Root cause. The seasonal canal and the free, unscheduled power together. The declining water table, the tail-end inequity and the salinity patch are all downstream symptoms of a supply schedule that pushes the whole command onto groundwater for eight months of the year.

Proportionate response. 1.1 dS/m is well below the 4 dS/m threshold at which most crops begin to lose yield, and cotton is more salt-tolerant than paddy, so salinity cannot be used as an argument for either crop - it is a trend to monitor and drain for.

Part 1 - on the holding (farmer alone).

• Keep kharif paddy under canal supply; it is the secure, MSP-backed crop and it matches the water calendar.
• Replace rabi paddy with a low-water crop - green gram, chickpea, mustard or maize - which needs a fraction of 1,850 mm and fixes nitrogen in the gram cases. This is the single biggest water saving available.
• Confine cotton to no more than a third of the area and take it under contract with a ginner so that price risk is shared, not carried alone.
• Install a meter or at least a marked delivery pipe, and irrigate the lower field separately, with a shallow drain to stop the salt patch spreading.

Part 2 - on the distributary (needs the water users' association). Restore a warabandi: a fixed rotation with a stated turn for each outlet, head to tail in sequence, published in the village. A published roster is what converts a 40% tail-end deficit into a manageable one. Desilt and repair the outlet structures so the roster can actually be delivered.

Part 3 - with the state (needs the electricity utility and the irrigation department). Rationalise the night-only feeder; an assured daytime window with a flat tariff removes both the incentive to flood-irrigate and the excuse for it. Conjunctive-use rules that tie tube-well extraction to canal supply in the command are the standard instrument, but they cannot be enforced without a reliable feeder.

Judgement on priority. Part 1 first, because it is within the farmer's control and pays immediately. But the water table will keep falling while Parts 2 and 3 wait, so the plan is incomplete without them - which is exactly why the individual rational choice does not add up to a rational command.