India has already attained the status of water-scarce country. Water requirement for irrigation by 2050 is estimated to rise to 1191 billion cubic metre (BCM). Water should, therefore be treated as national asset and its use should be planned for optimising benefits.

These measures, according to them will help in effective use of water for boosting food production in the country. Earlier there was a separate ministry dealing jointly with irrigation and power. This clearly substantiates the genuineness of the demand for irrigation to be accorded infrastructure status, they stated.

BN Navalawala, advisor to the Planning Commission's irrigation and command area development division said ground water should be given the status accordedto minerals. This would result in arresting the depletion of ground water table caused due to avoidable indiscriminate uses. It would also help in boosting efforts for replenishing the ground water stock through proper water harvesting and conjoint use of surface water.

The NCIWRDP under the chairmanship of SR Hashim, former member-secretary of the Planning Commission has estimated that 1191 billion cubic metre (BCM) of water will be required by 2050 to meet the irrigation requirements. Using the population forecasts by United Nations (middle variant) and Visaria and Visaria (standard) for high and low population estimates up to 2050, it is estimated that the total demand for foodgrain by 2050 would be about 605 million tonne.

For urban and rural population distribution, extrapolated projections of United Nations and Registrar General of India for the year 1996 was adopted.The net sown area will have to increase to 145 million hectare and the cropping intensity has to be increased to 175 per cent by theyear 2050. The percentage of irrigated to gross cropped area will be 59 to 76. The average crop yield level under rainfed conditions has increase to 1.5 tonne per hectare and that under irrigated conditions should increase to 4 tonne per hectare.

At present, the irrigation potential is 42.2 million hectare through surface water and 42.9 million hectare through use of ground water. This irrigation potential can be ultimately extended to 75.9 million hectare through use of surface water and 64.1 million hectare through use of ground water. NCIWRDP has estimated that the total water requirement by 2050 would increase to 1681 BCM.

The total water withdrawal for utilisation by all sectors in 1990 was about 518 BCM. This is estimated at 609 million cubic metre per capita per annum.