Sugarcane or Check Dam? A Panchayat's Water Budget
A gram panchayat in a Bundelkhand block is reviewing its water use. The block receives about 800 mm of rain, of which nearly 85 per cent falls in July to September. The number of tube wells in the panchayat rose from 9 in 2005 to 41 in 2024, and the water table has fallen from about 12 metres to 34 metres in the same period. Wheat, a rabi crop, occupies nearly 70 per cent of the cropped area. A sugar mill has now offered a ten-year contract to grow sugarcane at ₹350 per quintal, promising free seed and a pump connection; the panchayat's electricity is heavily subsidised. Two members support the contract as a way to raise cash incomes. An engineer has separately proposed a check dam costing about ₹60 lakh that would recharge wells over roughly 120 hectares. The panchayat has one meeting before the sowing season to decide. Farmers say irrigation already fails in May, and three wells in the hamlet on higher ground have dried completely.
1. Should the panchayat accept the sugar mill's contract? Argue from the water figures given.
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The contract should be rejected or deferred, and the arithmetic shows why. Sugarcane is a ten-to-twelve-month crop needing roughly 1,800–2,200 mm of water; the block receives about 800 mm, so almost all of the crop's water would have to be pumped out of an aquifer that has already dropped 22 metres (about 1.1 metres a year). The three dried wells on the higher ground are the visible sign that extraction has crossed the safe limit, and in a common aquifer one farmer's pumping lowers every neighbour's well - the mill is being offered a subsidy that would be paid by the neighbours. Two further details tighten the case: the 'free pump connection' enlarges the extraction, and electricity subsidy makes pumping feel free when it is not. A ten-year contract also locks the panchayat in, while the water table is not guaranteed for ten years. The reasoning is not that cash is unimportant - ₹350 a quintal is real income - but that the water cost is not on the mill's balance sheet. Verdict: no sugarcane on unirrigated or higher ground; if grown at all, only on a small, well-watered area by gram sabha consent.
2. Recommend a cropping plan consistent with 800 mm of rain, and name two institutional measures the panchayat should adopt with it.
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A plan that matches the rainfall rather than fighting it would shift the balance towards low-water crops. Kharif (the assured season): bajra, jowar, arhar (tur), moong and groundnut, with timely sowing so the crop uses the July–September rain directly instead of stored groundwater. Rabi: gram, mustard and barley on residual moisture, with wheat reduced in area and water saved by ridge-furrow sowing, mulching and short-duration varieties. This is a shift in area, not the abandonment of wheat - the district remains a wheat belt. Institutional measures should follow the crop plan, because a plan alone will be ignored when prices rise. First, a water budget by hamlet, agreed in the gram sabha, with limits on new tube wells in the over-exploited higher hamlet and published well-level readings each season. Second, participatory groundwater management with micro-irrigation - sprinkler or drip subsidy, and a rotating pumping schedule so that no farm pumps while the neighbours' wells are dry. Crop insurance and a minimum-support arrangement should accompany the change, since the panchayat is asking farmers to give up a cash crop.
3. The check dam costs ₹60 lakh and recharges about 120 hectares. Explain what it does, and state one limit the panchayat must record before approving.
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A check dam is a low barrier across a seasonal stream. It slows the runoff that now leaves the block in a few hours during the monsoon, holds water in the stream bed for weeks, and lets that water percolate into the aquifer so that wells yield longer into the dry season; it also raises soil moisture near the stream. The cost works out to about ₹50,000 per hectare (₹60 lakh ÷ 120 ha), which is defensible if the wells it recharges are the ones that dry first. The limit the panchayat must record is that a check dam does not create new water. It stores and infiltrates part of the same 800 mm; in a low-rainfall year it may not fill at all, and silt will reduce its capacity over time unless it is desilted. It is therefore a supplement to reducing extraction, not a substitute. Before approving, the panchayat should ask for the catchment area, the siltation estimate, an operation and maintenance plan with a named fund, and an answer to whether the three dried wells actually lie downstream of the proposed site.