Community based borewell irrigation systems for improving productivity and water use efficiency in dryland agriculture

Groundwater is an important source for irrigation in large tracks of India. This source has been considered as infinite and used indiscriminately without any disregard to recharge prospects. Reducing the over exploitation of ground water and its optimal utilization for irrigation is the need of the hour especially in low rainfall areas. In order to address this problem, Andhra Pradesh Government has started a project on Andhra Pradesh Draught Adaptation Initiative (APDAI) in the year 2012 in which water has to be shared by Borewell owners (BWO) and Non borewell owners (NBWO) by pooling the bore wells and irrigating through micro irrigation systems.