India’s water crisis needs collective farming shift

Source: The post India’s water crisis needs collective farming shift has been created, based on the article “Ensuring sustainable water use in agriculture” published in “Businessline” on 26 May 2025. India’s water crisis needs collective farming shift

UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper3-Environment

Context: India’s water crisis is driven by economic misalignments, not just scarcity. Agriculture consumes over 80% of freshwater, with rice and sugarcane alone using more than 60%. Current policies reward water-intensive farming. Sustainable solutions demand a shift from individual incentives to collective, cooperative strategies that align with ecological realities.

Misaligned Incentives and Water Misuse

1. Input Subsidies and Output Guarantees: Rice and sugarcane benefit the most from MSPs, procurement, and free or flat-rate electricity. This reduces the marginal cost of groundwater extraction to almost zero, encouraging overuse and depletion of aquifers.
2. Private Gains, Public Losses: This situation reflects moral hazard and negative externalities. Farmers act rationally for personal gain, but their choices impose long-term social and environmental costs.
3. Limits of Conventional Schemes: Efforts like Haryana’s Mera Pani Meri Virasat provide ₹7,000 per acre to shift from paddy to less water-intensive crops. But uptake remains limited due to weak economic appeal and poor alignment with ground realities.

Economic Rationality of Farmers

1. High Profits from Paddy Cultivation: In districts like Sonepat, the basmati paddy variety PB 1121 is popular. In 2023, it offered net profits of over ₹50,000 per acre, largely due to strong demand from Gulf nations.
2. Lower Returns from Alternative Crops: Even with subsidies, crops like bajra earned only about ₹32,000 per acre, making them less attractive. The ₹7,000 incentive does not bridge this gap.
3. Status Quo Bias Among Small Farmers: Small and marginal farmers prefer paddy because it offers predictable, higher income. Unless alternative incentives meet or exceed this profitability, behavioral change is unlikely.

Geographic Constraints and Spatial Externalities

1. Water’s Diffusive Nature: Groundwater flows across boundaries through lateral subsurface movement, capillary rise, and soil pathways. This undermines conservation efforts on individual plots.
2. Compounding Issues in Low-Lying Areas: In regions with high water tables and slow percolation, paddy cultivation nearby leads to over-saturation and anoxic stress for crops like bajra or pulses.
3. Failure of Isolated Solutions: Without hydrological zoning or collective frameworks, individual crop-switching efforts are ineffective. Spatial spillovers cancel out water-saving gains.

Need for Collective and Cooperative Incentives

1. Village-Wide Incentive Models: Linking subsidies to group behavior, where 60–70% of farmers in a village adopt water-saving crops, spreads risk and encourages broader adoption.
2. Social Accountability and Peer Monitoring: Collective compliance reduces monitoring costs and misreporting. Villages are more likely to self-regulate when incentives are tied to community performance.
3. Success of Decentralised Models: The Participatory Guarantee Mechanism (PGM) in organic farming shows how community-led certification can replace costly external checks. Similar approaches can work for water governance.

A New Policy Vision for Water Sustainability

1. Towards Cooperative Water Governance: A scheme like Hamara Pani Hamari Virasat could reward entire villages that commit to crop diversification. Shared goals and peer accountability would guide implementation.
2. Beyond Technocratic Solutions: Water policy must reflect how farmers think under uncertainty. Aligning individual and group incentives with ecological outcomes is essential.
3. The Next Agricultural Revolution: India must shift from state-led food security to community-driven ecological sustainability. Policies must embed collective action, spatial planning, and local stewardship into resource management.

Question for practice:

Examine how misaligned economic incentives contribute to India’s water crisis and the need for collective solutions.