The Indian summer monsoon has long been the fulcrum around which the country’s agricultural economy pivots. Kharif is the primary crop-growing season in most of India, and rains in June, July, and August determine the success of sowing and early crop growth.
Since 1951, the Indian summer monsoon rainfall has declined by 6 per cent. This can translate to a reduction of 20-30 per cent in some regions. Over recent decades, dry spells during the monsoon have become more frequent, prolonged, and spatially widespread. Data from the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) show that the frequency of dry spells was 27 per cent higher during 1981-2011 compared to the 1951-1980 period.
The geography of this stress is uneven but worryingly broad: Central India, including Saurashtra and Gujarat, is prone to cumulative dry spells across the season, while Marathwada, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Meghalaya, and Kerala show significant increasing trends in dry days, specifically during July and August. Similarly, in South Peninsular India, parts of Tamil Nadu and Rayalaseema (stretching across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) face recurring dry spell pressure.
In 2023, India witnessed its driest August in over a century. A 36 per cent national rainfall deficit and more than 20 consecutive dry days across key agricultural belts laid bare the fragility of rain-fed farming systems. In 2025, monsoon rainfall in the country as a whole reached 108 per cent of the Long Period Average, an above-normal season aided by the absence of El Niño conditions. Yet, even this surplus masked sharp regional disparities, with Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh recording deficient rainfall.
If Indian agriculture needs to adapt to climate change, the first step is to become resilient against monsoon variability. To this end, there is an urgent need to fundamentally reorient India’s irrigation strategy. For decades, irrigation investments have been framed in terms of increasing crop output and expanding canal irrigated areas. However, today, the more urgent function of irrigation is risk mitigation. What farmers require is not necessarily water for maximising yield, but timely access to water to prevent crop failure during dry spells; or what is commonly termed protective irrigation.
Many irrigation systems in India were originally designed with protective irrigation in mind. Canal project reports from the 1960s through the 1990s often highlighted this as a goal. Yet, over time, canal infrastructure has either underperformed due to inadequate maintenance, siltation, and outdated design, or has been repurposed to serve intensive cropping patterns that strain resources and exclude marginal areas.
Accordingly, to bring the irrigation strategy back on track, several corrective measures are needed.
First, local water governance must be strengthened. Current irrigation management regimes (rules and institutions that govern how and by whom canal water is allocated and distributed) remain top-down and fragmented. Thus, to improve local water governance, water user associations, starting as clusters of 20-25 farmers, need to be bolstered across India and irrigation regimes. Many states now have policy frameworks, outlining how farmer groups can manage their water resources locally. Unfortunately, many of these provisions exist only on paper, and are restricted to a few jurisdictions, like canal irrigated areas.
Along with water user associations, community institutions, like farmer producer groups and panchayats, must be offered autonomy support and tools to manage water allocation, particularly during scarcity. This includes transparent entitlements, conflict resolution mechanisms, and planning capacities. Without inclusive frameworks, even the best infrastructure will fail to deliver water equitably.
Second, infrastructure itself needs to shift from large-scale systems to distributed systems. Farm ponds, check dams, recharge structures, and borewell-sharing pipelines can support localised, timely water delivery. Modernisation of existing canals, including upgradation of last mile irrigation infrastructure with pressurised pipelines and drip and sprinkler systems, is essential to reduce losses and extend reach. Concurrently, policy reforms must accommodate areas outside traditional canal command zones, enabling water-sharing, supplying through hose reel and tankers and lift irrigation schemes across administrative boundaries within the same landscape.
Third, and most critically, precision in irrigation is essential. Blanket schedules must give way to dynamic, science-based crop water budgeting. This involves training farmers and frontline staff to assess soil moisture, understand crop-stage water needs, and respond to short-term forecasts. Indian irrigation regimes should consider all sources of water together: rainfall, groundwater, canal water, and soil moisture. Investments in improving soil organic carbon and moisture-holding capacity are equally vital, reducing the volume of irrigation required. Technology can play a role, but building local, institutional knowledge is indispensable. Village-level hydrologists can be trained and equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to provide local water planning services to farmers, water user associations, and panchayats.
Fourth, an increase in revenue expenditure on irrigation across India is crucial to implement everything discussed so far. In most sectors of the Indian economy, we lament the lack of adequate levels of capital expenditure by governments. In irrigation, there is very little opex (or revenue expenditure) to complement the canal and irrigation assets being constructed. Canal networks are built well, but there is rarely enough money to desilt and repair them on time. There are not enough funds for farmer consultation, engagement, and education before and after the infrastructure is developed. Without the ‘soft’ infrastructure of social capital, local knowledge, and problem-solving skills, the hard infrastructure of irrigation will not offer a good return on investments.
India’s food security and the stable growth of rural incomes now depend less on expanding irrigation coverage and more on ensuring that it functions as a buffer against climate stress. The shift towards protective irrigation must be deliberate, adequately funded, and embedded within both national and state-level water and agricultural policies.
Protective irrigation is not a fallback strategy; it is central to building resilience. When monsoons falter, the ability to deliver even small amounts of water at the right time could make the difference between recovery and ruin for millions of farmers. A monsoon shield for every farmer is an environmental and socioeconomic imperative.
Ashima Chaudhary is the Managing Partner of the Rural Futures programme at WELL Labs, a water systems transformation centre based in Bengaluru.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth