Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

Vol. 28, Nov Suppl Issue 2022; Page No.(S362-S368)

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF COST AND EFFICIENCY IN WATERUSE OF GROUNDWATER MARKET PARTICIPATING AND NON-PARTICIPATING FARMS IN CUDDALORE DISTRICT OF TAMILNADU

Bala R., Venkataraman R. and Ravichandran S.

Abstract

Crop production and human survival primarily depends on available freshwater resources, where upto70% of the resource is used for irrigation purpose either as surface water or groundwater. Lack of surfacewater resources increases the dependence on groundwater. Ground water is the backbone of availablefresh water resources. Country’s economic growth is always dependant on high market opportunity andin-order to boom agricultural economy of our country, groundwater market plays a vital role. This is ahighly sensitive market as it has multiple dependant factors like growing population, effective water usage,availability, water restoration which changes demand and decides the role of water market. Althoughwater market is an informal structure, the demand and availability leads the exchange of water for monetaryvalue charged on the basis of area, volume and time. Due to increase in demand and decrease in availabilitywhich is caused by various environmental factors, water market plays a vital role in overall contributiontowards agrarian economy. This study tries to compare the cost and water use efficiency between waterparticipating and non-participating farms in cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu.