Sustaining India's Irrigation Infrastructure: Situation and Prospects

India has made significant progress in developing its water resources and post-independence years have witnessed large investments in water storage structures. Today, India has the capacity to store about 200 BCM of water, an irrigated area of about 90 M ha, and installed hydropower capacity of about 30,000 MW. Increasing competition for water across agriculture, industry, domestic and environment uses has already manifested in inter- and intra-sectors, basin, state, district and village level conflicts. India has made direct public investment of 88,100 crore in providing major, medium and minor irrigation infrastructure. India Water Vision, 2025 has estimated the gross water demand for multiple uses to double in the next 25 years with investment needs of 20,000 crore per year. As of now, India's irrigation infrastructure is expanding by 1.8 M ha of irrigation potential with a public outlay of 7,000 crore per annum. The current annual expansion is one-third less than the maximum growth achieved in the past. Deceleration in irrigation potential created through major and medium schemes started during 1980s as a consequence of declining real government expenditure on this sector