6th MINOR IRRIGATION CENSUS
WHY IN NEWS ?
- Recently The Ministry of Jal Shakti released the report on the sixth census on minor irrigation schemes.
ABOUT MINOR IRRIGATION CENSUS :
- The latest edition of the Minor Irrigation Census (MIC) —a compendium of borewells, tubewells, and other privately owned irrigation sources by farmers — conducted by the Union Jal Shakthi Ministry finds that electricity is the dominant source of power to extract water, over diesel and wind and solar energy.
- The MIC reports are not a reflection of the present state of use.
- The data made public in the latest, sixth edition of the report reflect irrigation trends in 2017-18. Similarly, the report released in 2017, or the fifth edition, reflect data in 2013-14 and the report of 2011, the situation in 2006-07.
- Collecting granular data down to the block level and making it public takes a few years.
FINDINGS OF THE CENSUS:
- As per the report, 23.14 million minor irrigation (MI) schemes have been reported in the country, out of which 21.93 million are Ground Water (GW) and 1.21 million are Surface Water (SW) schemes.
- As per the report, 23.14 million minor irrigation (MI) schemes have been reported in the country, out of which 21.93 million (94.8%) are Ground Water (GW) and 1.21 million (5.2%) are Surface Water (SW) schemes.
- For the first time, the information about gender of the owner of MI scheme was also collected in case of individual ownership.
- Out of all the individually owned schemes, 18.1 per cent are owned by women.
- Uttar Pradesh possesses the largest number of MI schemes in the country followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
- The same ranking of states follows for the GW schemes. Maharashtra leads in SW schemes followed by Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand.
- The report also revealed that there has been an increase of about 1.42 million in MI schemes as compared to the previous census.
- At the national level, both GW and SW schemes have increased by 6.9% and 1.2%, respectively.
- Dug-wells have highest share in MI schemes followed by shallow tube-wells, medium tube-wells and deep tube-wells.
- 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.
- The number of MI schemes increased by about 1.42 million between the fifth and sixth editions.
- Most of the schemes (96.6%) were privately owned and small and marginal farmers having less than two hectares of land owned the majority of them.
SYLLABUS : PRELIMS, CURRENT AFFAIRS
