An Impact Study on the Pattern of Groundwater Use by Farmers and Commercial Sectors in Tirupur District, Textile City, India

Groundwater is the major source of water for agriculture, domestic and industrial uses. Falling water table and depletion of economically accessible groundwater resources could have major social and economic consequences. Many are hailing groundwater transfer as the quickest, least cheapest, and most ecologically friendly answer to large cities' water supply and reliability problems. The water transfers generally focus on the purchase of water from willing sellers in agriculture to meet urban domestic and industrial water demand. The present study was undertaken mainly to study the pattern of groundwater use by the farmers and commercial sectors in Tirupur district. Out of the 180 farms selected for the study, 67.78 per cent of farms were water sellers and 32.22 per cent of farms were non-sellers. Among the three types of wells viz., open wells, open cum bore wells and bore wells; open wells formed the majority in all categories of farms. Whereas in all the farm categories of both the seller and non-seller groups, bore wells dominated the total number of wells owned by each of the farm categories. Bore wells dominated for more than 50 per cent of the total number of wells in large farms, whereas in case of small farms, bore and open-cum-bore wells have been shared equally. According to the farmers, bore wells were having more success rate than the open cum bore wells. The number of abandoned bore wells was also significantly higher in all categories of farms, since open wells were acted as a storage tank for storing the water extracted from bore wells. The percentage of failed bore wells to the total number of wells per farm had ranged from 41.89 per cent in large farms to 57.26 per cent in small farm group in seller category. The number of wells per farm among sellers was significantly higher whereas irrigated land per well was significantly lower. The present study was undertaken mainly to study the where groundwater transfer has been an increasing phenomenon over years resulting in pollution hazards and reduction in irrigated area.