Water is perceived as a universal Elixir of life across all continents, countries and cultures- it is much more than a resource- a sacred element. Water is a natural resource, fundamental to life, livelihood, food security and sustainable development. It is also a scarce resource; India has more than 18 percent of the world’s population, but has only 4% of world’s renewable water resources with 2.4% of world’s land area.

To cope up with future challenges in water sector, NWM through its Comprehensive Mission Document identifies five goals. One of the most important goals of the NWM is to improve the Water Use Efficiency (WUE) at least by 20%. To achieve this goal, research in the area of increasing WUE in agriculture, Industry and domestic water is one of the important strategies.

It is estimated that with 20% increase in the present level of water use efficiency in irrigation projects, as goal of National Water Mission, an additional 14 million hectare area can be bought under irrigation from the existing irrigation capacities and that in turn would involve only a very moderate investment as compared to the investment that would be required for creating equivalent potential through new schemes and technologies.

As a part of this strategy, NWM invited proposal of baseline studies for evaluating WUE of Irrigation project from various Water and Land Management Institutes and Irrigation Management and Training Institutes functioning in various states of the country. In response of this invitation and as per the proposal submitted by state WALMIs, National Water Mission (NWM) has awarded 26 Baseline Studies to four institutes covering six states with objective to evaluate water use efficiency of the completed major/medium irrigation projects.

Table: List of Baseline Studies Projects Awarded

Archive

Base Line Studies of Irrigation Project Archive