Development of irrigation in India has entailed huge capital investments resulting in a massive canal network which services a little more than 30 million hectares of agricultural land.
Development of irrigation in India has entailed huge capital investments resulting in a massive canal network which services a little more than 30 million hectares of agricultural land. But the physical condition of deterioration has in fact, been sharper since the beginning of the 1980s. This has led to a growing concern over the financial and cost recovery from major and medium irrigation schemes such that proper maintenance of the system can be ensured. State Governments have been incurring increasing losses in the irrigation sector as costs escalate and price of irrigation water remains low.
In this context, the present paper discusses the background of the financial performance of irrigation sector and evaluates its past performance. It also discusses various issues related to capital cost, operation & maintenance cost and cost recovery in this sector. Further, this paper also puts forward certain suggestions for effective financial recovery of this sector, especially with regard to granting of financial autonomy to the concerned agencies and inviting active help from farmers’ organizations.
The most dramatic changes in economic policies in 1991 related to industry. They were intended to make Indian industry globally competitive. After three years it is legitimate to ask whether there has been enough progress in achieving this intention. There are many individual units that have restructured themselves. Vast funds have flown into the private organised sector. Many foreign investors have expressed interest. The stock markets are euphoric. But there is as yet no clinching evidence that the Indian industry as a whole has restructured itself, or even that much of it is getting ready to do so. Many questions of policy at the levels of the central and state governments and of the operating units remain to be decided in a coordinated manner. Business confidence in the future appears to be at high levels. It has to be matched by substantial investments and changes in methods of working.
This paper is an attempt to review the Indian experience in industry reforms in the past three years. It puts together findings of a number of studies and indicates directions for future policies.
The Indian irrigation network is one of the largest in the world. But the productivity of these large numbers of surface irrigation schemes is nowhere near optimal and one of the main reasons ascertained for this is poor financial and physical management. In fact, in the current scenario of inflated costs,poor costs and poor cost recovery, the government is finding it impossible to sustain its irrigation development efforts. In order to correct this anomaly and improve management, it has become imperative to bring about a change in the institutional structure of this sector. The government has already taken some steps towards this by encouraging formation of user’s association to manage sections of major or medium schemes. But such isolated efforts are not proving to be enough and in this context this paper looks at these isolated efforts, as well the experiences of various nations which have been successful in developing efficient irrigation systems. Most of these successes are found to be either wholly or partially financially autonomous and this, in fact, appears to be the key to efficient management of these systems. This paper makes a modest attempt at putting forward certain suggestions for improved functioning of the irrigation sector, based on the experiences of the various states of India and other countries like Philippines, Korea, China etc.
Controlling inflation has been a central issue on the government agenda during 1992-93, as the price rise in 1991-92 generated considerable concern. In light of this, an attempt to explain the behaviour of prices and its projection for future periods attains greater significance. In this paper we have made an attempt to quantify the various components associated with the movements of prices viz., trend, and seasonal factors and residual elements (other than trend and seasonal factors). This exercise reveals that during 1991-92, it was the residual component which kept prices above the trend level. An attempt to project the WPI during 1992-93 at the overall level on a weekly basis has also been made here. It may be noted that this is primarily a statistical exercise and needs to be complemented by analysis of specific factors associated with the movement of residuals component. This analysis may thus be considered as a preliminary basis for more detailed studies of price behaviour.
