6th Minor Irrigation Census

6th Minor Irrigation Census

News: The Ministry of Jal Shakti has released the 6th census of minor irrigation schemes (with reference year 2017-18), shedding light on the state of irrigation practices across India.

What is Minor Irrigation scheme?
• A minor irrigation scheme is a type of irrigation project that uses surface water or groundwater to irrigate a culturable command area (CCA) of up to 2,000 hectares.
• CCA is an area which can be irrigated from a scheme and is fit for cultivation.
• Minor irrigation schemes are classified into two major categories and six sub-categories.
• Ground Water (GW) schemes encompass dugwells, shallow tube wells, medium tube wells, and deep tube wells.
• Surface Water (SW) schemes consist of surface flow and surface lift schemes.

Key Findings:
• A total of 23.14 million minor irrigation (MI) schemes have been reported in the country. Among these, 21.93 million (94.8%) are groundwater (GW) schemes, and 1.21 million (5.2%) are Surface Water (SW) schemes.
• Dug-wells have the highest share in MI schemes followed by shallow tube-wells, medium tube-wells and deep tube-wells.
• Uttar Pradesh leads in MI schemes in India, followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
• Maharashtra is the leading State in dug-wells, surface flow and surface lift schemes.
• Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab are the leading States in shallow tube-wells, medium tube-wells and deep tube-wells, respectively.
• In SW schemes, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand have the highest share.
• Approximately 96.6% of MI schemes are under private ownership.
• Among GW schemes, 98.3% are owned by private entities, and in SW schemes, this share is 64.2%.
• For the first time, data on the gender of MI scheme owners was collected. 18.1% of individually owned schemes are owned by women.