Publication

Abstract : The alarming water scarcity in the Gujarat state underscores the adoption of water efficient technologies like micro-irrigation. While the promotion of micro irrigation system in Gujarat corresponds with the national mission on micro irrigation, an unequivocal dynamism was observed in the expansion of MIS in the state as compared to the other states. This dynamism in the promotion of the MIS can be attributed to the specific policies and interventions that the state had vigorously adopted and followed in terms of provision of differential subsidies targeted towards the farmers segregated by their socio-economic status as well as the physical and economic water scarcity of the agro-ecological regions. In this regard, this paper aims to examine the role of institutional reforms and subsidy policy interventions in adoption and diffusion of MI across the state in the recent years. While the first part makes a comprehensive review of the state policy and intervention for the promotion of micro irrigation systems in the last decade, the second part of this paper provides a detailed analysis of the trends in the status of adoption of micro irrigation systems under the various subsidy policy and institutional intervention regimes. There is no uniform subsidy policy for promoting micro-irrigation across the state which varies with respect to caste, landholdings and geographical locations. Moreover, the water scarce regions get additional subsidy where farmers mostly depend on groundwater based irrigation. It is widely known that farmers in the water scarce region are more likely to adopt micro-irrigation, and hence, the research issue is whether the government should provide additional subsidy to enhance adoption rate in these regions. While hydrological and geographical parameters are almost equal in both dark-zone talukas (i.e., 54 talukas) and its counterpart adjacent talukas (i.e., 64 talukas), there is a discontinuity in assessing subsidy due to geographical location; the additional subsidy could be wasteful from a public perspective if similar adoption rate would have been achieved without this. Henceforth, this study aims to examine the impact of discontinuity in availing subsidy on the adoption and area under micro-irrigation. With collecting village-wise technology diffusion information from Gujarat Green Revolution Company Limited, the empirical analysis has been undertaken in two stages: (i) all the villages in the dark-zone and adjacent talukas (i.e., around 8075 villages) and (ii) border villages which share border with the adjacent talukas (i.e., around 1550 villages). Analysis based on Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) and Difference-in-Difference (DID) approaches reveals that additional subsidy enhances probability of adoption and area expansion under micro-irrigation and the coefficient is higher in the case of border villages sample as compared to the total sample.