Trends in Tubewell Irrigation, 1951-78

Tubewell technology came to India at the turn of the century, but because of numerous constraints, this new groundwater technology diffused extremely slowly in the years before Independence Private tubewell irrigation picked up with the beginning of the first Five-Year Plan, and since then the number of private tubewells has risen steadily, from 3,000 in 1951 to 22,000 in 1961, 540,000 in 1971 and about 175 million in 1978. Area irrigated by tubewells too (both public and private) has in. creased from about 0.25 million hectares in 1961-62 to about five and a half million hectares in 1973-74 Today, tubewells probably account for 30 per cent of the total irrigation facilities of the country, though the percentage varies widely from state to state.