Since Independence, the govt. of India has made huge investments in development of water resources. The performance of public funded irrigation projects has been continually declining over the years because of system maintenance issues, inefficient delivery systems, moreover as inefficient management at field level. Further, the expansion of irrigated area doesn't commensurate with the number of capital invested. Despite huge investments, the world under irrigation has not increased and at the identical time, yields are stagnating. The storage capacity of most of the massive and medium capacity reservoirs has declined (both live and dead storage capacity) by 20-30 overcome the years, due to excessive siltation resulting in less water storage and availability. Although large-scale surface irrigation projects have harvested substantial amount of water (300 billion kiloliter per year), which is sort of capable the groundwater withdrawal, the cultivated acreage using surface water sources is sort of half, in comparison to it using groundwater sources. This means indiscriminate use of water and low tide use efficiency. Further, increased cost of cultivation and soil salinity ends up in unsustainable agriculture in such irrigated areas. The revolution during the 1970s together with advanced technology of water pumping made a big impact on groundwater use. Individual farmers made huge private investments for developing and using groundwater resources, significantly enhancing the irrigated areas. Innovations in pumping technology together with free or subsidized power supply has accelerated groundwater extraction, leading to overexploitation and declining groundwater resources to unsustainable levels in many parts of the country. Even in irrigated areas, there's huge disparity in water access and utilization among end users, which has resulted in groundwater overexploitation, thus lowering the groundwater table in canal irrigated areas likewise. In irrigated areas, farmers have changed to economically remunerative crops that need intensive cultivation and more water.

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Keywords: Agriculture, Efficiency, Innovations, Discrimination, Political, Cultivated, Harvesting.