Irrigation Infrastructure in India with Special Reference to North East

Agriculture being the backbone of an economy is the source of livelihood, contributor to national income, supplier of marketable surplus and significant employment opportunities along with the major source of raw materials. Among various important determinants of successful agricultural activities, irrigation is an important one. Inadequacy in irrigation infrastructure is a significant bottleneck to achieve certain level of agricultural development. Since independence, various Governments have tried to improve the performance of the agricultural sector through the development of the irrigation infrastructure, which is well-reflected through the Five-year Plans. However, the irrigation practice in the North Eastern part of the country is to some extent different due to its topographical dissimilarity with other parts of the country along with climatic condition. In this backdrop, the present paper tries to capture the irrigation practice, broadly in the North East along with the practice prevailing in the other states of India. The present study looks into the problem at two different levels, at the country level and at regional level for North Eastern states. The paper has been divided in five sections and starts with the introduction. The second section will be a careful review of past studies on this aspect, followed by the third section which discusses the methodological issues. Section four will describe the data along with their detailed analysis and the final section concludes the paper along with policy recommendations.