A death that spotlights irrigation problems

On March 13, 2025, Kailash Arjun Nagare, a 2020 Young Farmer Award recipient, from Maharashtra, died by suicide, citing unaddressed irrigation demands. While India reports the highest water usage in agriculture globally, access to water for irrigation remains a contentious issue. Nagare’s death points towards the inequity in distribution, with social inequalities, water governance mechanisms, and policies determining the contours of allocation. The problem of water scarcity in India is thus multifaceted, indicating the co-existence of actual physical shortage with economic scarcity due to inequitable access and management.

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Untenable expansionThe agricultural sector accounts for almost 80% of the water withdrawal in India. Every year, 688 billion cubic metres of water is consumed by the farm sector, the highest in the world. Irrigation is an inevitable input for increasing agricultural production. However, its expansion has been highly untenable. The majority of the area under water-guzzling crops such as rice, wheat, and sugarcane is currently in the water-scarce north-west and sub-tropical belts of the country. According to a study published in Nature Water (2024), India alone accounted for 36% of global unsustainable irrigation expansion that happened between 2000 and 2015, with environmental and socio-economic implications.