73,50,000,000,000 Liters of water annually by paddy crop

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Groundwater level is decreasing sarcastically with time and is gonna make extraction more tedious and cumbersome.In India many states generally bigger cities have started suffering from the problem of freshwater availability.Chennai is one of those states.According to WHO report, Punjab will also start facing the problem of water scarcity  from 2020 and from 2025 India is gonna become a water scarce country with 2 billion people not having any availability to fresh drinking water.As population is increasing exponentially while on the other hand the groundwater and freshwater quantity is decreasing very fast, so it is obvious that water process will definitely rise and a time will come that water would be so expensive that only rich people would be able to afford it.If no initiated is started then millions of people would die because of lack of freshwater for drinking.Punjab farmers are having a great role in decreasing he groundwater levels of Punjab. As the people don't understand the upcoming epidemic they don't utilize water properly.
As the government of Punjab has given free electricity to farmers the farmers just start the pumps and forget it. Excessive water is supplied to crops resulting in leaching complexities. Punjab farming is about wheat and Paddy. As we know that paddy is high water requiring crop.
  • It needs 22-25 irrigations but 35 irrigations are given to it and one irrigation level is about 7 cm.
  • So when 35*7 the result is  245 cm of water depth is required by paddy or we can say that 1 single paddy crop requires water of 2.45 m height.
  • Now multiply this factor with the area of the farmer's field.
  • If we take a case of medium level farmer having area (2 Ha-4 Ha).If we take on average as 3 Ha area.
  • Now multiply 30,000*2.45=73,500 cubic meters.(1 Ha=10000 sq. m)
  • So you can imagine that 1 farmer having 3 Ha land sowing paddy uses 73,500,000 liters or 19416645.848 US Gallons.
  • Seriously!!!!!Can you even imagine that amount of water.
  • This much water only 1 farmer supplies to his paddy.
  • To produce a kilogram of rice, 2,500-5,500 liters of water is needed, as per the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
  • Now Punjab farmers have sown  3 lakhs hectares of paddy this year.
  • Now if 3 Ha land requires 73,500,000 liters of water then 31 lakhs Ha area of Punjab under paddy would need
73,500,000*300000*10000/30000=======73,50,000,000,000 liters of water annually of Punjab alone on paddy crop.......Imagine that.
  • Now you see why SAVE WATER slogans are there since your childhood. Just writing SAVE WATER slogans ain't gonna help.Data figures should be showed so they can understand the effects of the huge problem standing in front of them as everyone needs a spectacle to see it.
  • If the electricity given free to farmers is charged as for the farmers of other states.Then water can saved in a large amount. If electricity would be fully charged from farmers they  would operate pumps and tube-wells wisely and utilize water properly.

But there is another case I think is that if farmers shifted from wheat-paddy to vegetables then would those vegetable crops be able to survive under rainy seasons as those crops are less water requiring crops. There should be a systematic plan of cultivation of crops in the entire PUNJAB.Some areas  should be sown with vegetables while others with paddy.

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