ANDHRA PRADESH-Charity Begins in the House

rich peasants in Pravaranagar area that there should be a well-defined public policy on the sharing of waters amongst sugarcane cultivators situated upstream and down-stream of a canal irrigation system. This is indeed a comic and curious situation since the demand for equitable sharing of water has precisely come from a lobby of rich peasants who are threatened for the first time in the last 35 years. This demand is symptomatic of the larger conflict on equity that will inevitably shape the politics of Maharashtra. Hence we have considered that the question of equitable sharing of gains of irrigation is not exactly a hypothetical one that can be put off to a more convenient future time, (iii) The next logical option is to equalise the rates of lift and flow irrigation. Once we accept the idea that the irrigation water should be shared over a large area and amongst a greater number of cultivators then this equalisation of costs becomes self- evident. It should be comparable to freight equalisation of steel over the entire country once steel is considered as a basic input of the industrialisation strategy. With this equalisation, the farmers who are situated beyond the command of flow irrigation canal system would have access to seasonal irrigation by way of lifting the water from the canal. This cost of lifting should be subsidised as a matter of public policy on equity.