Faulty tools cannot help Indian farmer

At the recent 2nd All India State Water Ministers' Conference in Udaipur, the Central Water Commission (CWC) of India unveiled two grand-sounding innovations: the ET-based Quick Irrigation Performance Assessment (EQIPA) and the ET-based Detailed Irrigation Performance Assessment (EDIPA), both developed with the World Bank.

- KESHAV. S

While marketed as revolutionary, these tools embody the classic case of misplaced techno-optimism in a country where on-ground irrigation infrastructure is in shambles.

Evapotranspiration (ET) - the sum of evaporation from the soil and transpiration from plants - is the equivalent of a crop's daily water "intake." Just like a doctor might track hydration levels in a patient, ET maps theoretically help us gauge how much water crops are consuming and, in turn, where there is stress or surplus. With such information, irrigation water can, in principle, be adjusted for greater efficiency.

But there's a catch. Like using a stethoscope on a mannequin, applying ET in its current form through EQIPA and EDIPA grossly misunderstands the real patient: India's broken irrigation system.

The CWC's fanfare ignored the fact that India already has three mature, globally validated models: SEBAL (1998, Netherlands), METRIC (2007, U.S.), and SSBOP (2013). Why then reinvent the wheel at great cost to taxpayers? EQIPA and EDIPA offer no discernible methodological innovation over these tools, but worse, they do so while ignoring India's specific on-ground complexities.