Presenting this year’s budget, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal sounded an ominous warning. Not that it wasn’t known earlier but coming from him was yet again an official acknowledgement of a worrisome futuristic scenario that is fast pushing the frontline agricultural state towards desertification and an impending ecological disaster. “76 per cent of the assessed blocks are over-exploited and the estimated ground water availability for future irrigation use is negative.”
The warning had been sounded earlier. The two reports on crop diversification in 1986 and 2002, authored by the eminent agricultural economist Dr S S Johl, were essentially in response to the depleting ground water situation. I remember Dr Johl many a times making a very strong point as to how Punjab ends up virtually exporting water when it transports surplus wheat and paddy every year to the deficit areas. Later, in 2009, the observations of NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data showed an equally worrisome trend. “We don’t know the absolute volume of water in the Northern Indian aquifers, but GRACE provides strong evidence that current rates of water extraction are not sustainable, hydrologist Matt Rodell of NASA was quoted as saying. Subsequently, a number of international and even national studies by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Central Ground Water Board and even the Punjab Agricultural University, among others, have pointed to a grim future ahead.
Chief Minister Amarinder Singh too has been very concerned at the depleting water resources. Speaking in the Vidhan Sabha, he sounded a poignant note when he said that the state has run out of all options and there was an urgency required to tackle the water crisis, which may include changing the cropping pattern, going in for crop diversification and so on. But after all these warnings, if the Finance Minster simply ends up reiterating the government’s resolve to address the problem of groundwater depletion using the common popular jargons like judicious, sustainable and equitable use to manage water availability and eventually informed that the government is in dialogue with the World Bank to find a workable solution, clearly showed the lack of political courage to take the bull by the horn.
Like the previous governments, the present Congress regime too has shied away from initiating any significant step to move away from water guzzling crops, primarily paddy, lest it upsets the predominant vote bank. Interestingly, almost at the same time the budget session was in progress, the Coordinator of the All India Kisan Coordination Committee, Yudhvir Singh, while addressing a series of meetings organised by the Bhartiya Kisan Union (Lakhowal) was asking farmers to shift not only from paddy cultivation to restore ground water but also move away from intensive farming to agro-ecological practices. He wanted them to devote at least one acre out of the total land area they have to non-chemical agriculture. In fact, he made an impassionate plea urging farmers to reduce crop output. “Your problem is you produce more. If you were to reduce production by 10 per cent on an average, you’ll get a better price for your crop harvest and also save on chemical inputs.”
With 98 per cent assured irrigation, and having the highest crop productivity in wheat, rice and maize – the cereal crops – Punjab has the dubious distinction of turning into a hotbed of farmer suicide. With over 16,600 farm suicides, including farm labourers, documented in a house-to-house survey between the year 2000 and 2017 by the three public sector universities – Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana; Punjabi University, Patiala; and the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, there was ample evidence to relook at the intensive farming model that the state had adopted. World Bank had played a crucial role in pushing the intensive and exhaustive farming model, and to expect the same institution to help in improving the management of its scarce resources clearly showed that the state had not learnt any lessons and was not willing to change.
Albert Einstein had once said: “We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” I have always maintained that we cannot ask the same people who were in a way responsible for the crisis, to provide solutions. First and foremost, the time is appropriate to move away from intensive farming, which has triggered massive environmental degradation and has brought the food bowl onto the edge of sustainability. The impending ecological disaster will not be addressed by changing the cropping pattern. A recent study by the Centers for International Projects Trust (CIPT), a Columbia University initiative, has after a detailed study on water budgeting shown that crop diversification will not make much of a difference in ultimate water balance.
What Punjab needs in fact is a change in farming systems. It is time the Punjab government does a complete rethink of the integrated farming systems that needs to be evolved, if it is serious in protecting its future. If Andhra Pradesh (AP) can launch Zero Budget Natural Farming with the aim to convert all its 60-lakh farmers to non-chemical agriculture by the years 2024, I see no reason why Punjab cannot at least initiative agro-ecological methods of farming for the marginal and small farmers to begin with. Considering that every third farmer in Punjab is below the poverty line, this is the community that needs immediate hand holding. Instead of pushing more machines and more chemicals into farming, using the Rs 6,000 per year direct income support allocated under the PM-Kisan scheme, Punjab should supplement with its own contribution and like AP provide at least Rs 15,000 per year. This package should be linked to agro-ecological farming systems. In Karnataka, for instance a direct income support of Rs 10,000 per year is announced for farmers cultivating millet crops.
In Chhattisgarh, instead of going in for increasing crop productivity to emerge out of the prevailing farm crisis, the new Congress government, has incorporated the traditional “Narwa (water), Garuwa (livestock), Ghurawa (compost/biofertiliser), and Baadi (backyard cultivation)” in an interesting agro-ecological approach to be accomplished at panchayat level. These are just a couple of examples to show there exists a way out provided the state government is willing. After all, extraordinary problems need extraordinary solutions. More of the same will only acerbate the crisis.
Punjab agriculture is in fact crying for change. A change that will save it from the impending ecological disaster that Manpreet Badal warned about. It has to begin with reframing and redesigning the farming systems. But this will be strongly resisted by a powerful cartel that exists -- among politicians, bureaucrats, agricultural scientists, and economists – who will call for business as usual. Unless the Chief Minister can break through that cordon, Punjab will continue to suffer. #
Review farming methods to tackle water crisis. The Tribune. Mar 14, 2019
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