Pantnagar Journal of Research

Abstract

As Indian agriculture is mostly rainfed, making provision for the irrigation is really a matter of great concern for the policy makers of India. Water is a scarce resource and not available in plenty, focus on 'more crop per drop of water' emphasises the significance of improving water use efficiency. Despite lots of investment in making provisions of irrigation water for the farmers, the situation in terms of productivity and production efficiency has not changed much. To address this challenge, the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) was started in 2015 with the goal of making adequate provision of water for irrigation and achieving convergence of investments in the irrigation sector at the field level. The present study was undertaken to find out the attitude of PMKSY beneficiaries and the identify the constraints faced by them. The study was conducted in Dehradun district of Garhwal division of Uttarakhand which was selected purposively as it has the highest number of PMKSY beneficiaries. Total Four villages were selected randomly from two blocks. The study sample included 122 beneficiary farmers selected by using Probability Proportionate to Size (PPS) method. The study findings revealed that 59.01 per cent of beneficiary farmers showed favourable attitude towards PMKSY. Further, major infrastructural constraints faced by beneficiary farmers were unavailability of spare parts, lack of adequate information, poor quality of pipes, micro-tubes and other materials and poor after-sales services. Financial constraints were 'requiring high and frequent maintenance, difficult and time taking subsidy disbursement, poor subsidy and favouritism shown by government officials' and geographical constraints were 'unavailability of clean water and fragmented land holding'.