Development of Agriculture Production Clusters (APC) harnessing surface water is one of the time tested strategy to address small and marginal farmers' livelihoods, reduce food insecurity. The recent SECC data shows Jharkhand as one of the states with highest percentage (17% above national average) of families owning land, the same survey shows 76% of the Households have highest earning member earning less than Rs. 5,000 pm. The key bottleneck in enhancing farm-based livelihoods is lack of irrigation facilities (only 10.6 % of the state's net sown area is under irrigation).

With agriculture as the major source for rural employment, low water conservation and irrigation development leads to lower and vulnerable agricultural productivity; make food security and subsistence the primary concern of rural population of Jharkhand. The State produces barely half of its food grains requirement (the country is surplus by 9%) and the state has been classified as extremely food insecure state.

Key success indicators visible on the ground;

Way-Forward:

It is clear from several studies and reports, including a set of recommendations given by Shri Bibek Debroy (Niti Ayog, member) in his report to "Chief Minister's Committee for the Development of Jharkhand " highlighted the following points:.

• Minor and small-lift irrigation schemes are more suitable, as they are economical to construct and have low gestation period and do not involve any major land acquisition problem or displacement of population.
• A definite fact that emerges from an examination of earlier state induced lift irrigation and other schemes is the failure to provide the right kind of policy and institutional support to the schemes, for scale-up.

Based on recommendations from eminent experts and past experiences from projects implemented by the state government over the years it is clear that the strategic focus needs to be on providing requisite support for scaling up community based small-irrigation schemes, (most opportunities are there for lift irrigation, but flow irrigation from suitable sites can also be considered). Past efforts had happened though initiatives of individual district level officers (under BPDP programme) and later by the Tribal Welfare Department. The state level focus to really scale up these successful efforts have been lacking in the past, which can be corrected now. This large scale expansion of the community based irrigation systems can be layered on the strong social mobilization base created in the state by NGOs and the JSLPS. The NRLM intensive blocks where universalization of SHGs has been completed can be ideal locations to demonstrate this approach.

The Government of Jharkhand seeing the need for reducing monsoon dependency of agriculture production and to give impetus to farm prosperity has sanctioned an ambitious pilot grant of Rs. 100 Cr. to SRLM (JSLPS). The focus of the block-grant is to demonstrate at scale the potential of micro-irrigation schemes in securing livelihoods for small-holder families and in developing robust "Agriculture Production Clusters" (APC).