As Punjab announced its worst fears of a drought-like situation in peak paddy season on Thursday, the fast sinking water table in the state now stares at an imminent crisis of further plunging to an all-time low, given the overexploitation of subsoil water by farmers.
Punjab has experienced a deficit of 51 per cent rainfall till June 30. Farmers have been using diesel generators on a large-scale to run tube wells to mitigate the ‘drought’.
This has increased their input costs. An estimated additional cost of Rs 250 crore on diesel to pump out groundwater for irrigation is likely to lower the profit margins for farmers.
Whether it is deficit rainfall, drought or above average monsoon, crop produce in Punjab has invariably peaked. But that comes at a terrible price.
The water table in over 80 per cent of Punjab is depleting with an average decline ranging between 50 and 100 cm a year.
Of 138 hydrogeological blocks, over 110 are already listed as dark or grey zones due to overexploitation.
The Central Groundwater Board has banned drilling new borewells in 45 blocks that had crossed the critical overexploited mark.
From 26,000 tube wells in Punjab in the late sixties, the figure today touches a whopping 13 lakh tube wells, which explains the colossal toll on underground water.
Punjab has long been the dominant contributor, adding about 45 per cent of wheat and 35 per cent of rice to the central grain pool, for the last three decades.
Declaring a drought-like situation, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Thursday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a special financial assistance of Rs 2,330 crore for the state.
Crisis of deficit rainfall for Punjab and Haryana come as a double whammy, both for farmers and the state government. Swelling inputs costs for farmers are imminent, and so is the drain on the state ex-chequer which will have to dole out increased subsidy for free power supply to farmers.
Against a subsidy bill of Rs 404 crore in 1997, the state government is likely to land up paying in excess of Rs 6,000 crore this year as power subsidy to the farm sector.
The complexities of unsustainable agriculture, over mechanisation of farm practices, growing indebtedness and populist measures in Punjab leaves much for the decision makers to mull.
Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal informed Modi that the state farmers might come under debt due to the current situation.
He said the power corporation is not only diverting electricity from paying sectors to non-paying agriculture sector to ensure uninterrupted power supply to farmers, but also purchasing extra power from outside the state.
“The situation could pose a serious challenge to the critical area of national food security to which Punjab has always been the dominant contributor,” the CM wrote.