96 Tubewells and One Falling Water Table: A Farming Decision in Sangrur
Village Rampura in Sangrur district has 180 hectares under cultivation: 140 ha under the paddy-wheat cycle, 25 ha under cotton and 15 ha under fodder and vegetables. The village has 96 tubewells. In 2010 water was struck at 20-25 metres; submersible pumps are now being lowered to 45-60 metres, and Gurpreet, who farms 1.6 ha, has seen his pump repair and diesel back-up bill rise from about ₹9,000 to ₹26,000 a year. Electricity for tubewells is free but is supplied for only eight hours, mostly at night. A canal outlet irrigates about 40 ha on an eight-day rotation (warabandi). Gurpreet's paddy yields 6 tonnes per hectare and the procurement centre buys it at the announced MSP; a local trader offers ₹2,100 per quintal for maize, for which there is no assured purchase. A state scheme pays ₹15,000 per hectare for switching to maize or pulses, but only if 10 contiguous hectares are enrolled together.
1. Trace the cause-and-effect chain that connects free electricity for tubewells to the falling water table, and explain why Gurpreet does not simply stop growing paddy on his own.
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The chain, step by step:
- Free or flat-rate power makes the marginal cost of pumping the last hour close to zero. Nothing in the farmer's account book discourages one more hour of pumping.
- Paddy is the crop that rewards that signal - it needs roughly two to three times the irrigation water of maize and it has assured procurement at MSP, so it is both water-hungry and low-risk.
- Each farmer pumps as much as his crop needs, but the aquifer is shared. The water he saves would mostly be pumped by a neighbour, so he captures almost none of the benefit of restraint and bears the whole cost of changing crops.
- Extraction exceeds recharge, so the table falls from 20-25 m to 45-60 m, and every farmer must deepen his well, buy a bigger pump and burn more diesel in the eight-hour gap - the ₹26,000 bill is the symptom, not the cause.
Why he does not act alone: his sunk costs (well, pump, paddy-friendly machinery) lock him in; maize has no assured buyer while paddy has a procurement centre; his 1.6 ha is too small to change the aquifer; and the state scheme's ten-hectare condition means his own switch earns him nothing unless six or seven neighbours move with him. Individually rational behaviour produces a collectively ruinous result - a classic commons problem, not ignorance.
2. Should Gurpreet join the ten-hectare block scheme? Set out the arithmetic and the conditions under which joining is rational.
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Do the arithmetic first, in cash terms.
- Paddy, 1.6 ha at 6 t/ha: 96 quintals × ₹2,275 = about ₹2,18,400 gross. Costs of transplanting, labour, fertiliser and irrigation are roughly ₹45,000/ha, i.e. about ₹72,000, leaving roughly ₹1,46,000 net.
- Maize, 1.6 ha at 3.5 t/ha: 56 quintals × ₹2,100 = about ₹1,17,600, plus the incentive of ₹15,000 × 1.6 = ₹24,000, giving about ₹1,41,600 gross; costs of about ₹28,000/ha (₹45,000) leave roughly ₹97,000 net, and his pump bill falls by perhaps ₹8,000.
So joining still leaves a gap of roughly ₹40,000-50,000 a year, before fodder value is counted. Joining is rational only if three conditions are met: (i) a written buyer contract or a dairy arrangement lifts the maize return or gives fodder a cash value that closes most of the gap; (ii) six or seven neighbours actually sign up, since his 1.6 ha cannot trigger the block rule; (iii) he does not put all his land into the new crop - keep about 0.4 ha of paddy for home use and try maize on 1.2 ha to spread risk.
The deeper point: the ten-hectare condition asks smallholders to solve a collective-action problem with no penalty for the neighbour who stays out. A well-designed scheme would reward each hectare switched, not only the block.
3. Propose two measures that would reduce water use without changing the crop, and explain why a purely technical fix will not be enough.
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Two measures inside the paddy-wheat cycle:
- Direct seeding of rice and laser levelling. Direct seeding skips the flooded nursery-and-transplant stage and saves a substantial share of irrigation water; laser levelling removes the high spots where water is wasted and can cut irrigation water by around 15-20%. Both fit his existing machinery and do not require a new buyer.
- Short-duration varieties plus strict adherence to the mid-June transplanting date. A shorter crop season and transplanting after the pre-monsoon showers mean less pumping in the hottest weeks, and the state law already fixes the date; enforcement and extension matter as much as the seed.
Why technique alone is not enough: with free electricity the marginal cost of pumping is zero, so a farmer who saves water gains nothing in cash and may simply pump longer elsewhere in the season; and the water he leaves in the aquifer is drawn by his neighbours. The saving has to be made visible and payable - metered supply with a direct benefit transfer that pays farmers for measured units saved, a community warabandi for tubewells so that the village manages the shared well, and procurement or price signals that make diversification pay. Gurpreet's ₹26,000 repair bill shows that he already feels the energy cost of the problem; policy has simply not converted the water saving into an income he can bank.