Resources of India and their Utilisation | ISC Class 12 Geography Notes

This note covers the Resources of India and their Utilisation unit: environment as capital versus resource; land resources and land-use categories; quality and size of landholdings and fragmentation; water resources, irrigation types and overwatering; water conservation and rainwater harvesting; types of farming, cropping seasons and intensity of cropping; problems of Indian agriculture, the Green Revolution and the second Green Revolution; animal husbandry, market gardening and orchard farming; growth conditions and leading states for major foodgrain, commercial and industrial crops; fishing in India with its methods, major fishing areas and Andhra Pradesh and Kerala as case states; mineral resources; and conventional and non-conventional sources of power with their environmental consequences.

Why should environment be treated as capital rather than a resource for development?

Development is often understood as the exploitation of the environment to produce goods and raise incomes.

In this view, forests, rivers, soil and minerals are seen simply as resources: materials to be extracted, cleared or diverted for roads, factories, dams and farms.

This way of thinking treats the environment as a stock that can be drawn down indefinitely without consequence.

A more careful view treats the environment as capital: a stock of natural assets whose productive capacity must be maintained if development is to continue into the future, not just the present generation.

Capital, unlike a resource to be consumed once, yields a flow of benefits (clean water, fertile soil, breathable air, stable climate) only if it is looked after.

Overusing forests for timber, overdrawing groundwater for irrigation, or polluting rivers with industrial effluent reduces the capital stock, so that future production and future generations are worse off even if present output rises.

This distinction matters for every resource discussed in this note. Land that is over-cropped without rest, water that is drawn faster than it recharges, and minerals that are mined without regard for the land left behind are all cases where environment has been mistaken for a disposable resource rather than managed as capital.

Environmental management therefore means balancing the pace of use against the pace of renewal, so that development does not erode the very base on which it depends.

The test is simple: a resource is spent, while capital is maintained. A forest cleared for one season's timber is a resource consumed; the same forest managed so that it keeps yielding timber, holding soil and feeding streams is capital kept intact.

Seen this way, environmental management is not a brake on development but the condition for development to last. It asks how fast a stock may be drawn down, how quickly it renews, and who bears the cost when it is exhausted.

What is a land resource, and how is land classified by use in India?

Why land matters more to agriculture than to other sectors

Definition: land resource. Land is the fixed physical surface area available for human use (settlement, cultivation, grazing, forestry, industry and infrastructure); unlike many resources it cannot be increased in area and is fixed in terms of its total extent.

Land matters more to people depending on agriculture than to those engaged in secondary or tertiary activities, because agriculture is a purely land-based activity: the contribution of land to agricultural output is proportionately larger than its contribution to industrial or service output.

Quality of land also has a direct bearing on agricultural productivity, and land ownership in rural areas carries social value, acting as security for credit and adding to social status.

Land-use categories and changes in the stock of cultivable land

Land-use records (maintained by the land revenue department) group land into categories that add up to the reporting area, which differs slightly from the geographical area measured by the Survey of India.

The main categories are forests, barren and wasteland, land put to non-agricultural uses, permanent pastures and grazing lands, land under miscellaneous tree crops and groves, culturable (cultivable) waste (left fallow for more than five years), current fallow (left fallow for one year or less), fallow other than current fallow (fallow for more than one but less than five years), and net sown area, the physical extent of land on which crops are sown and harvested.

Two of these categories are grouped together in the land-use pattern. Land not available for cultivation covers barren and wasteland together with land put to non-agricultural uses such as settlements, roads, canals and industries, which cannot be brought back under the plough in the ordinary course.

Area sown more than once is the part of the net sown area on which a second or third crop is raised in the same agricultural year; it is the difference between the gross cropped area and the net sown area, and it measures how intensively the cultivated land is used.

The total stock of cultivable land (total cultivable land) is estimated by adding net sown area, all fallow lands and culturable waste.

Over the decades there has been a marginal decline in this stock as a percentage of total reporting area, with a greater decline in cultivated land despite a corresponding fall in cultivable waste.

Land-saving technology and intensity of cropping

Since the scope for bringing new land under net sown area is now limited, land-saving technologies are needed: those raising yield per unit area of one crop, and those raising total output per unit area through greater intensity of cropping across the year, which in a land-scarce but labour-abundant country also reduces rural unemployment.

What determines the quality and size of landholdings, and how can fragmentation be reduced?

Quality of cultivable land varies with soil depth and fertility, moisture availability, slope and the degree of erosion or salinisation already suffered.

Rising population pressure has steadily reduced the average size of landholding, while holdings themselves are commonly fragmented: a single farmer's land lies scattered in several small, separated plots, often because land is divided among heirs in successive generations.

In many states, consolidation of holdings (bringing scattered plots of one owner together into a single compact block) has not been carried out even once, and where it has been done, fragmentation reappears over time as land passes down the generations, making a second round of consolidation necessary.

Small, fragmented holdings are uneconomic: they raise the cost and time of cultivation, discourage investment in machinery, and keep many farmers at a subsistence level.

Measures to reduce fragmentation

Standard measures used to reduce fragmentation and raise the viability of holdings include the following.

1. Consolidation of holdings: legally exchanging and regrouping a farmer's scattered plots into one or two compact parcels, usually carried out by the state revenue department.
2. Ceiling on landholding and redistribution: fixing an upper limit on the area an individual family may hold, with surplus land redistributed to the landless, so very large estates do not coexist with unviable micro-holdings.
3. Cooperative and joint farming: encouraging small owners to pool land, labour, machinery and credit so that farming is carried out at a more efficient scale without each family losing its individual title.
4. Reform of inheritance practice: encouraging heirs to take their share of a family's land as a single compact plot, or in cash value, rather than as a physical sliver of every field, so that each new partition does not fragment the land further.
5. Updating land records: maintaining clear, surveyed records of ownership and boundaries so that consolidation, once done, can be defended in law and does not quickly unravel through disputes.

What are India's water resources, and how are they used?

How much water does India have?

Water is a cyclic resource: about 71 per cent of the earth's surface is covered by water, but freshwater is only about 3 per cent of the total, and only a small share of that is effectively available for human use.

India accounts for about 2.45 per cent of the world's surface area, 4 per cent of the world's water resources, and more than 17 per cent of the world's population, so availability per head is tight.

The total water available from precipitation in a year is about 4,000 cubic km. From surface water and replenishable groundwater together the figure is 1,869 cubic km, of which only 60 per cent can be used beneficially, giving a total utilisable water resource of only 1,122 cubic km.

Surface water and groundwater resources

Surface water comes mainly from rivers, lakes, ponds and tanks; India has about 10,360 rivers and tributaries longer than 1.6 km each.

The mean annual flow in all river basins is estimated at 1,869 cubic km, but owing to topographical and hydrological constraints only about 690 cubic km (32 per cent) of available surface water can actually be used.

The Ganga, Brahmaputra and Barak river basins cover only about one-third of the country's area but, because rainfall is relatively high there, hold 60 per cent of total surface water resources; much of the flow of south Indian rivers such as the Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri has already been harnessed, unlike the Ganga and Brahmaputra.

Groundwater resources (replenishable) total about 432 cubic km, and utilisation is especially high in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, while states such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Kerala use only a small share of their potential.

Sectoral utilisation of water

Agriculture therefore dominates water use by far, because development has traditionally prioritised irrigation to raise output from an agrarian economy; the shares of industry and domestic use are expected to rise as the economy develops further.

Why is irrigation needed, and what are its sources and methods?

Definition: irrigation. The artificial application of water to land to supply the moisture that rainfall does not reliably provide, protecting crops from moisture deficiency or supplying the higher, steadier moisture needed for high-yielding, water-demanding crops.

Why irrigation is needed

Irrigation is needed because rainfall in India varies greatly in space and time: large tracts, especially north-western India and the Deccan plateau, are rainfall-deficient and drought-prone, winter and summer are dry over most of the country, and even high-rainfall areas such as West Bengal and Bihar suffer occasional breaks in the monsoon that damage crops.

Certain crops, such as rice, sugarcane and jute, need far more water than rainfall alone supplies.

Irrigation also permits multiple cropping in a single year and raises yields: irrigated land is consistently more productive than unirrigated land, and high-yielding varieties need the regular moisture that only an assured irrigation system can give, which is why the Green Revolution succeeded mainly where canal and tube-well irrigation was already developed, such as Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

Protective and productive irrigation, and modern methods

A distinction is made between protective irrigation, which supplements rainfall over as wide an area as possible simply to guard crops against moisture stress, and productive irrigation, which applies a higher volume of water per unit area to achieve maximum yield in the growing season.

Modern methods of applying irrigation water economically include sprinkler irrigation, in which water is sprayed over the crop through a network of pipes and nozzles under pressure, suited to undulating land and crops that do not tolerate waterlogging; and drip irrigation, in which water is delivered slowly, drop by drop, close to the root zone of each plant through perforated pipes, minimising evaporation and seepage loss.

Both methods use far less water per unit of crop than flooding a field and limit waterlogging and soil salinisation, but they are expensive to install and maintain and are better suited to high-value crops such as fruit, vegetables and plantation crops than to extensive cereal cultivation.

Perennial canals and the problem of overwatering

Perennial canals, fed by barrages or dams on rivers that flow throughout the year, provide an assured, year-round supply that has allowed multiple cropping in canal-irrigated tracts of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh; their advantage is reliability, but the disadvantage is that continuous flooding of fields raises the water table and, without adequate drainage, leads to waterlogging and the salinisation of soils.

Excessive and uncontrolled application of canal and tube-well water, or overwatering, occurs where irrigation is cheap or unmetered and farmers apply far more water than the crop needs.

It is especially common in the heavily canal- and tube-well-irrigated tracts of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

The dangers of overwatering include a rising water table that waterlogs the root zone, the capillary rise of dissolved salts to the surface causing alkalisation and salinisation of otherwise fertile soil, and depletion of groundwater where extraction by tube-wells exceeds natural recharge; over-withdrawal in states such as Rajasthan and Maharashtra has also raised fluoride concentration in groundwater, and in parts of West Bengal and Bihar has increased arsenic concentration.

How can water resources be conserved, including through rainwater harvesting?

Because freshwater supply is limited and demand is rising, conservation and management, rather than only new extraction, are the chief route to water security. Measures recommended include watershed development, rainwater harvesting, recycling and reuse of water, and the conjunctive use of surface and groundwater.

Watershed management

Watershed management covers the conservation, regeneration and judicious use of all natural and human resources within a watershed, preventing runoff and recharging groundwater through structures such as percolation tanks and recharge wells; its success depends heavily on community participation.

A four-panel illustration showing harvesting through watershed management (a check dam and stone wall across a hill stream); harvesting through village lakes (eris); harvesting through service wells (rooftop collection led through a brick filter into a well); and harvesting through recharge wells (water passed through a sand filter and a collection tank into a recharge well).

Rainwater harvesting

A typical rooftop rainwater-harvesting system for a house or building works through the following sequence of steps.

1. Rain falling on the rooftop or paved courtyard is channelled through gutters and down-pipes rather than being allowed to run off.
2. The collected water is passed through a filter, such as a layer of sand and gravel or a brick filter, to remove leaves, dust and other debris.
3. The filtered water is led into a storage tank for direct use, or into a recharge well or pit that allows it to percolate into the ground.
4. In rural Rajasthan this storage is traditionally a covered underground tank known locally as a kund or tanka, built near or within the house to store the harvested water for later use.
5. Over the dry season, the stored or recharged water is drawn upon for drinking, domestic use or irrigation, reducing dependence on piped supply or deep tube-wells.

Rainwater harvesting increases overall water availability, checks the decline of the groundwater table, dilutes contaminants such as fluoride and nitrate in groundwater, prevents soil erosion and flooding, and arrests salt-water intrusion in coastal aquifers when used to recharge them.

It is a low-cost, eco-friendly method and is particularly valuable in urban areas, where demand has already outstripped supply in most cities and towns; Tamil Nadu has made rooftop rainwater-harvesting structures compulsory in building construction.

What types of farming are practised in India, and how is intensity of cropping measured?

Types of farming by source of moisture

On the basis of the main source of moisture, farming is classified as irrigated and rainfed (barani).

Rainfed farming is further divided, according to the adequacy of soil moisture during the cropping season, into dryland farming, confined largely to regions with annual rainfall under 75 cm, growing hardy, drought-resistant crops such as ragi, bajra, moong, gram and guar and practising soil-moisture conservation; and wetland farming, where rainfall exceeds the moisture requirement of plants in the rainy season and the risk is flood and soil erosion, with water-intensive crops such as rice, jute and sugarcane and aquaculture in fresh-water bodies.

India has three distinct cropping seasons in the northern and interior parts of the country.

Cropping seasons, crop rotation and intensity of cropping

In the south this distinction is weaker because temperatures stay high enough for tropical crops to be grown in any period, provided soil moisture is available, so the same crop may be grown as many as three times in an agricultural year.

Crop rotation is the practice of growing different crops in succession on the same field across seasons, which helps restore soil fertility (particularly where a leguminous crop that fixes nitrogen follows a cereal) and spreads the labour and water demand of a farm across the year.

Intensity of cropping = (GCA ÷ NSA) × 100 where GCA is the gross cropped area (the total area sown, counting a plot more than once if more than one crop is grown on it in the year) and NSA is the net sown area (the physical area sown, counted once regardless of how many crops are grown on it).

A high intensity of cropping is desirable for a land-scarce, labour-abundant country because it raises output from limited land while also increasing the demand for farm labour, reducing rural unemployment.

What problems affect Indian agriculture, and why was the Green Revolution needed?

Common problems of Indian agriculture

Indian agricultural problems vary by region but several are common across the country.

1. Dependence on erratic monsoon: irrigation covers only about 33 per cent of cultivated area, so most cropping still depends directly on rainfall; a poor south-west monsoon also reduces canal water supply, and even high-rainfall tracts suffer fluctuations that bring both drought and flood, as in the flash floods of drylands of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan in 2006 and 2017.
2. Low productivity: yields of most crops, including rice, wheat, cotton and oilseeds, are lower than in the U.S.A., Russia and Japan, and labour productivity is low because of the heavy pressure of population on land, particularly in rainfed dryland tracts growing coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds.
3. Financial constraints and indebtedness: the inputs of modern agriculture (seeds, fertiliser, pesticides, machinery) are expensive, and marginal and small farmers with little or no savings must borrow from institutions or moneylenders, falling into debt after crop failures or low returns.
4. Lack of land reform: unequal land distribution inherited from the colonial revenue systems (Mahalwari, Ryotwari and the most exploitative, Zamindari) was never effectively reformed after independence because state governments avoided decisions against politically powerful landlords.
5. Small farm size and fragmentation: average holding size keeps shrinking under population pressure and holdings remain fragmented, as described above, making them uneconomic.
6. Lack of commercialisation: many small and marginal farmers grow foodgrains chiefly for their own family's consumption; genuine modernisation and commercial farming have taken hold mainly in irrigated tracts.
7. Vast underemployment: unirrigated tracts suffer seasonal unemployment ranging from four to eight months, because agricultural operations are not labour-intensive enough to occupy workers year-round.
8. Degradation of cultivable land: faulty irrigation and intensive cropping practice have caused alkalisation, salinisation and waterlogging in irrigated areas, excessive pesticide and insecticide use has left toxic residues in the soil, and the displacement of leguminous crops along with shortened fallow periods has reduced natural nitrogen fixation; rainfed humid and semi-arid tracts suffer water and wind erosion, often worsened by human activity.

The Green Revolution and the need for a second Green Revolution

After independence, foodgrain production was raised initially by switching from cash crops to food crops, intensifying cropping on already cultivated land, and bringing cultivable and fallow land under the plough, but production stagnated in the late 1950s and two consecutive droughts in the mid-1960s caused a food crisis that forced grain imports.

By the mid-1960s, high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of wheat (from Mexico) and rice (from the Philippines) became available.

India introduced a package technology of HYVs with chemical fertilisers in irrigated tracts of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, an approach that needed assured soil moisture through irrigation to succeed.

This spurt of growth, called the Green Revolution, made the country self-reliant in foodgrains but was initially confined to irrigated areas, causing regional disparity until the technology spread to eastern and central India after the 1970s.

The need for a second Green Revolution arose from this very success: because the first Green Revolution had concentrated gains in a few irrigated states, attention from the 1980s turned to rainfed areas that had been bypassed.

Its strategies are: agro-climatic planning, begun in 1988 to induce regionally balanced agricultural development; diversification of agriculture away from a near-total dependence on cereal crops; and the harnessing of resources for dairy farming, poultry, horticulture, livestock rearing and aquaculture, so that rainfed and dryland tracts share in growth rather than depending on a single crop and a single season.

How has animal husbandry diversified Indian agriculture, and what is the importance of market gardening and orchard farming?

Animal husbandry is the rearing and breeding of livestock, such as cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats and poultry, for milk, meat, wool, eggs, draught power and manure.

As agricultural planning since the 1980s has recognised the need to diversify away from a near-total dependence on crop output, animal husbandry has been promoted alongside horticulture and aquaculture as a way of raising rural incomes, giving farmers a steadier flow of income across the year (since livestock produce does not depend on a single harvest season), using crop residues and fallow land productively, and providing additional employment, especially for the landless and for women in rural households.

This diversification reduces the risk that a crop failure in a single season leaves a farm household with no income at all.

Market gardening is the intensive cultivation of vegetables, fruits and flowers on small plots located close to urban markets, so that perishable produce reaches consumers quickly;

orchard farming is the cultivation of fruit trees on dedicated land, often under miscellaneous tree crops and groves in land-use records.

Both have grown in importance as urban demand for fresh vegetables, fruit and flowers has risen with rising incomes and urbanisation, giving farmers near cities a more remunerative alternative to foodgrain cultivation on small holdings and encouraging a shift from subsistence to commercial farming in the land surrounding expanding towns and cities.

Where are India's major crops grown, and what conditions do they need?

Foodgrains, cereals and the major commercial crops

Foodgrains occupy about two-thirds of the total cropped area in the country and dominate cropping everywhere, whether the regional agriculture is subsistence or commercial; they are classified as cereals (fine grains such as rice and wheat, and coarse grains such as jowar, bajra, maize and ragi) and pulses.

Cereals occupy about 54 per cent of total cropped area; India ranks third in cereal production after China and the U.S.A.

On an outline map of India, shade the major rice-growing area as printed, a broad band running from the eastern Gangetic plain down both the east and west coasts (the printed figure carries only MAJOR AREA and MINOR AREA shading, with no state labels) and mark the minor-area belt in the north-west; label the Tropic of Cancer, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

On an outline map of India, mark the jute-growing belt in the eastern region near the West Bengal/Bangladesh border, and the diagonal cotton belt spread across central, western and southern India as printed (the figure itself carries only a JUTE/COTTON legend, with no state labels); label the Tropic of Cancer, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

Pulses and other crops

Pulses, being rainfed crops of the drylands of the Deccan, central plateaus and north-western India, occupy about 11 per cent of total cropped area; their yields are low and fluctuate year to year.

Gram, mostly a rainfed rabi crop of central, western and north-western India needing only light showers, has lost ground to wheat in Haryana, Punjab and northern Rajasthan since the Green Revolution;

Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Rajasthan are the main producers. Tur (also called arhar, red gram or pigeon pea) is grown on marginal, rainfed land in the dry central and southern states; Maharashtra alone contributes about one-third of national production.

Ragi (finger millet) and coconut are grown chiefly on the red and lateritic and sandy coastal soils of peninsular India; ragi needs a warm, moderately dry climate and is grown mainly in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, while coconut needs a hot, humid tropical climate with abundant rainfall and does best on sandy coastal soils, and is grown mainly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

How is fishing carried out in India, and what problems affect its development?

Types and methods of fishing

Indian fisheries are divided into marine fisheries, carried out along the coastline and continental shelf, and inland fisheries, carried out in rivers, lakes, tanks, ponds and reservoirs.

Marine fishing is further divided by distance from shore into inshore fishing, close to the coast using smaller boats, and deep sea fishing, further out using larger, mechanised vessels, and by the depth at which fish are caught into pelagic fishing, for species that live near the surface or in mid-water, and demersal fishing, for species that live on or near the sea bed.

The main fishing methods follow these divisions. Inshore and coastal fishing is done from catamarans, plank-built boats and small mechanised boats with gill nets, shore seines and traps, usually on day trips. Deep sea fishing uses larger mechanised trawlers that stay out for longer periods and carry ice or cold storage on board. Pelagic species are taken with drift nets and encircling nets near the surface, while demersal species are taken with bottom trawls and line gear that work close to the sea bed. Inland fishing uses nets, traps and hooks in rivers and tanks, and ponds and reservoirs are increasingly stocked and harvested as culture fisheries.

Several factors limit the growth of fishing in India: the dependence of inshore fishing on traditional, non-mechanised craft limits the catch and the distance that can be covered; deep-sea fishing needs costly mechanised boats and cold storage that many fishing communities cannot afford; the lack of adequate port, processing and marketing infrastructure in some coastal stretches reduces the value realised from the catch; and over-fishing in inshore waters can deplete fish stocks faster than they can replenish, which is why conservation measures, such as closed seasons during the breeding period, minimum mesh-size regulation on nets, and the protection of breeding and nursery grounds, are used to allow fish stocks to recover.

Major fishing areas of India

The major marine fishing areas lie along the long coastline and the adjoining continental shelf: the north-west coast off Gujarat and Maharashtra, the Malabar coast off Kerala and Karnataka, the Coromandel coast off Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and the deltaic coasts of West Bengal and Odisha, together with the offshore waters around the Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The major inland fishing areas are the Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems and their floodplain wetlands, the backwaters and lagoons of Kerala, Odisha and West Bengal, and the large reservoirs and tanks of the peninsular states.

Case study: fishing in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala

Andhra Pradesh, with its long coastline on the Bay of Bengal and a network of rivers, tanks and reservoirs in its interior, has developed both marine and a strong inland fishery, drawing on species raised in freshwater tanks and brackish-water aquaculture along its estuaries; this combination of marine and inland output makes it a leading state for overall fish production.

Kerala, on the Arabian Sea coast, has a comparatively narrow continental shelf that is rich in fishing grounds close to shore, and a long tradition of marine fishing supported by numerous small fishing harbours and a dense coastal population dependent on the sea for its livelihood; backwaters such as those along its lagoon coast also support inland and brackish-water fishing.

In both states, factors such as the length and configuration of the coastline, the width of the continental shelf, the availability of harbours and cold storage, and the skill and capital of the fishing community together shape how much of the available fish resource is actually harvested.

What are India's mineral resources, and how are they classified and distributed?

Definition: mineral. A natural substance of organic or inorganic origin with a definite chemical composition and definite physical properties.

Classification of minerals

A flowchart dividing minerals first into metallic and non-metallic; metallic minerals are split into ferrous (e.g. iron, manganese) and non-ferrous (e.g. copper, bauxite); non-metallic minerals are split into fuel minerals (e.g. coal, petroleum, natural gas) and other non-metallics (e.g. mica, limestone, graphite).

Metallic minerals are the source of metals; they are divided into ferrous minerals, which contain iron (such as iron ore itself and manganese), and non-ferrous minerals, which do not (such as copper and bauxite).

Non-metallic minerals are either organic in origin, the fossil fuels or mineral fuels derived from buried plant and animal remains (coal, petroleum), or inorganic, such as mica, limestone and graphite.

Distribution of minerals and leading producers

Minerals are unevenly distributed, show an inverse relationship between quality and quantity (good-quality ores are scarcer than low-grade ones), and are exhaustible, since they take long geological periods to form and cannot be replenished once worked out, which is why they must be conserved rather than used wastefully.

Most metallic minerals occur in the old crystalline rocks of the peninsular plateau, mainly east of a line linking Mangaluru and Kanpur, concentrated in three broad belts: the north-eastern plateau belt (Chhotanagpur, the Odisha plateau, West Bengal, parts of Chhattisgarh), rich in iron ore, coal, manganese, bauxite and mica; the south-western plateau belt (Karnataka, Goa, Tamil Nadu uplands, Kerala), rich in ferrous metals, bauxite, high-grade iron ore, manganese and limestone but poor in coal; and the north-western belt along the Aravalis in Rajasthan and Gujarat, with copper, zinc, building stones, gypsum and Fuller's earth, plus petroleum deposits in Gujarat.

Exploitation of minerals and its effects

The exploitation of mineral resources is affected by the grade and depth of the ore body, the distance of the deposit from the market or from processing plants, the availability of transport, power and water at the mine site, and government policy on mining leases and environmental clearance.

Mining brings large revenue and employment and supplies the raw material base for industry, but it also disturbs land, strips vegetation, pollutes water and air, and, because minerals are exhaustible, leaves a region with little once the deposit is worked out unless the income is invested in other productive activity.

What are the conventional sources of power, and what are their potential and limitations?

Coal and petroleum

The main conventional (fossil-fuel and nuclear) sources of power in India are coal, petroleum and natural gas, together with hydro-electric and nuclear generation.

Coal occurs mainly as Gondwana coal in the Damodar, Sone, Mahanadi and Godavari valleys, with over 97 per cent of reserves in these basins; about 80 per cent of India's coal is bituminous, non-coking grade.

Coal remains the mainstay of thermal power generation and of smelting iron ore, and its potential for industrialisation lies in its abundance and wide distribution across the north-eastern plateau belt, but its limitations include relatively low coking-coal reserves (needing imports for steel-making), high ash content, and the long-distance haulage required to bring it from the coalfields to power stations and industries elsewhere in the country.

Petroleum occurs in sedimentary basins of the tertiary period in Assam, Gujarat and the offshore Mumbai High field, with newer finds in the Krishna-Godavari and Kaveri basins; it supplies fuel for all internal combustion engines and feedstock for fertiliser, synthetic rubber, synthetic fibre and other petrochemical industries.

Its limitation for Indian industrialisation is that domestic reserves meet only part of national demand, so a large share must be imported, exposing the economy to global price swings.

Environmental consequences of fossil fuels

The use of coal and petroleum as conventional fuels carries significant environmental consequences: burning coal and petroleum releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, contributing to global warming; thermal power stations draw large volumes of water for cooling and discharge it back warmer, causing thermal pollution of rivers and water bodies; coal combustion in thermal plants produces fly ash that must be disposed of, and both fuels add particulate matter, sulphur and nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere, worsening air pollution.

Hydel, thermal and nuclear power

Hydel (hydro-electric) power is generated by the force of falling water, typically at multipurpose river-valley dams; its development depends on suitable river gradient, a reliable year-round flow and a reservoir site, and it provides renewable, low-emission power along with irrigation and flood control benefits from the same dam, but construction displaces people and submerges forest and farmland.

Thermal power is generated by burning coal, petroleum or natural gas to raise steam that drives turbines; it can be sited close to either the fuel source or the consuming centre, but it depends on a steady fuel supply and causes the air and water pollution described above.

Nuclear power is generated from the controlled fission of radioactive material such as uranium; its development depends on the availability of fissile material, specialised technology and stringent safety regulation, and a leading advantage is that it generates large amounts of power from a small quantity of fuel without the air pollution of fossil fuels, though it carries the risk of radioactive accident and the long-term problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste.

India's nuclear power stations include Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu), Rawatbhata (Rajasthan) and Narora (Uttar Pradesh), among others.

What are non-conventional energy sources, and why must India promote them?

Non-conventional (renewable) sources differ from fossil fuels and nuclear fuel in that they are not exhausted by use and are generally less polluting, which is why there is a recognised need to promote them alongside, and eventually in place of, conventional sources.

• Solar energy: captured from sunlight using photovoltaic cells or solar water heaters; its potential in India is considerable because of the long hours of strong sunshine over most of the country, especially in the arid and semi-arid west and the Deccan, but its limitations are the high initial cost of panels, the need for storage (batteries) to supply power at night, and the large land area needed for utility-scale solar farms. Its environmental consequences are small in operation, though the manufacture and eventual disposal of panels and batteries leave waste that must be managed.
• Wind energy: captured by wind turbines in areas of strong, steady wind, with good potential along the western coastal belt and parts of the southern peninsula; its limitation is that output is intermittent and depends on wind speed, and suitable sites are geographically limited. Its environmental consequences are low emissions in operation, but turbines take up land and can disturb birds and create noise near settlements.
• Biomass energy: derived from organic matter such as crop residue, animal dung and wood, converted into biogas or burnt directly; it has wide potential in a largely agrarian country with abundant crop and livestock waste, but its limitation is low energy density and the continued health hazard of indoor smoke where traditional biomass burning is not replaced by cleaner biogas plants. Its environmental consequences are that burning biomass releases smoke and carbon dioxide, while biogas plants reduce this and give a clean cooking fuel.
• Tidal energy: captured from the rise and fall of ocean tides in estuaries or gulfs with a large tidal range, such as the Gulf of Kachchh; its potential in India is limited to a few suitable coastal sites, and the technology and construction cost of tidal barrages remain high. Its environmental consequences are that a barrage changes the flow of the estuary and can affect its fish and other marine life.
• Geothermal energy: captured from heat stored in the earth's crust, typically where hot springs occur; its potential in India is confined to a small number of known hot-spring locations and has so far been developed only on a very limited scale. Its environmental consequences are minor, though the hot water drawn up can carry dissolved minerals and gases that must be handled.

Promoting non-conventional sources is necessary because conventional fossil fuel reserves are exhaustible and their combustion causes global warming, thermal and air pollution, whereas renewable sources, properly developed, can meet a growing share of demand without depleting a finite stock or adding comparably to pollution; their main general limitation across all types, however, is the still-high upfront cost of the generating technology and the intermittent or site-specific nature of the resource, which keeps their overall share of national power generation smaller than that of coal, hydel and nuclear power.

Going beyond the syllabus

These ideas extend the unit and are not needed for the questions on it.

Case study: watershed development at Ralegan Siddhi

Ralegan Siddhi, a village in Ahmadnagar district, Maharashtra, is cited as an example of watershed development achieved almost entirely through community participation rather than government funding.

Voluntary labour by villagers repaired a leaking percolation tank embankment, after which seven wells below the tank held water in summer for the first time in living memory; open grazing was completely banned, stall-feeding was introduced, and the cultivation of the water-intensive crop sugarcane was banned in favour of pulses, oilseeds and low-water cash crops.

The initiative also brought social change (a ban on dowry, caste discrimination and liquor distilling, and decisions by local consensus) alongside the water conservation measures, and the resulting water availability transformed a drought-prone, impoverished village into a model of sustained agricultural prosperity.

Glossary

• Land-use category — one of the classes (forest, net sown area, fallow, pasture, non-agricultural use, and so on) into which the land revenue department divides the reporting area.
• Net sown area (NSA) — the physical area of land on which crops are sown and harvested, counted once however many crops are grown on it in a year.
• Gross cropped area (GCA) — the total area sown in a year, counting a plot more than once if more than one crop is grown on it.
• Culturable (cultivable) waste — cultivable land left fallow (uncultivated) for more than five years, which can be reclaimed for cultivation.
• Current fallow — land left uncultivated for one agricultural year or less, to let it recover fertility.
• Fragmentation of landholding — the splitting of one farmer's holding into several small, scattered plots, usually through inheritance.
• Consolidation of holdings — the legal regrouping of a farmer's scattered plots into one or two compact blocks.
• Protective irrigation — irrigation given as a supplement to rainfall, to protect crops from moisture deficiency over the widest possible area.
• Productive irrigation — irrigation that supplies a higher volume of water per unit area to maximise crop yield.
• Intensity of cropping — the number of times land is cropped in a year, expressed as gross cropped area as a percentage of net sown area.
• Green Revolution — the rapid rise in foodgrain output from the mid-1960s produced by high-yielding seed varieties, chemical fertiliser and assured irrigation.
• Market gardening — intensive cultivation of vegetables, fruit and flowers on small plots near urban markets for quick sale.
• Pelagic fishing — fishing for species that live near the sea surface or in mid-water.
• Demersal fishing — fishing for species that live on or near the sea bed.
• Ferrous mineral — a metallic mineral containing iron, such as iron ore or manganese.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: An increase in "area under forest" in land-use records means more trees have actually grown. Correct: It can simply mean more land has been officially demarcated as forest by government order, without any increase in actual forest cover.
• Misconception: Net sown area and gross cropped area are the same figure. Correct: Net sown area counts a plot once regardless of how many crops are raised on it in the year, while gross cropped area counts it once for every crop grown.
• Misconception: Protective and productive irrigation differ only in which crop they serve. Correct: They differ in objective and in the volume of water applied per unit area: protective irrigation spreads limited water thinly to guard the widest area, while productive irrigation applies more water to a smaller area to maximise yield.
• Misconception: Overwatering is harmless because more water should mean a better harvest. Correct: Excess water raises the water table, causes waterlogging and brings dissolved salts to the surface, actually reducing fertility through salinisation.
• Misconception: The Green Revolution raised foodgrain output evenly across the whole country. Correct: It was initially confined to irrigated tracts such as Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, creating regional disparity until the technology spread to eastern and central India later.
• Misconception: All minerals containing metal are called ferrous. Correct: Ferrous refers specifically to minerals containing iron; metallic minerals without iron, such as copper and bauxite, are non-ferrous.
• Misconception: Non-conventional energy sources can fully replace coal, petroleum and nuclear power in the near term. Correct: They have considerable potential and lower pollution, but high installation cost and site-specific or intermittent output currently keep their share of total power generation smaller than conventional sources.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. State the land-use category that covers barren and wasteland together with land put to non-agricultural uses. [1 mark]

1. Land not available for cultivation.

Q2. Define intensity of cropping. [2 marks]

1. Intensity of cropping is the extent to which land is cropped more than once in a year.
2. It is calculated as gross cropped area divided by net sown area, multiplied by 100.

Q3. Assertion: The area sown more than once is high in Punjab. Reason: Punjab has assured canal and tube-well irrigation. Choose the correct option. [1 mark]

1. Both Assertion and Reason are true and Reason is the correct explanation for Assertion.

Q4. Distinguish between protective irrigation and productive irrigation. [4 marks]

1. Protective irrigation aims to guard crops against moisture deficiency by supplementing rainfall, so its strategy is to spread limited water over the maximum possible area.
2. Productive irrigation aims to supply enough soil moisture through the cropping season to achieve high productivity, so the water input per unit area of cultivated land is higher than in protective irrigation.
3. Protective irrigation therefore covers a wider area with a thinner water application, while productive irrigation covers a smaller area with a heavier water application.
4. Productive irrigation is more closely associated with intensive, high-yield cultivation, whereas protective irrigation is associated with insuring a larger acreage against failure of rainfall.

Q5. Explain why overwatering is a danger in intensively irrigated tracts such as Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. [4 marks]

1. In these states, more than 85 per cent of the net sown area is irrigated, mainly through canals and tube-wells, which encourages farmers to apply more water than crops need.
2. Excess water raises the groundwater table, which can waterlog the root zone and damage crops.
3. Rising groundwater draws dissolved salts up to the surface by capillary action, causing alkalisation and salinisation of otherwise fertile soil.
4. Heavy tube-well extraction to feed this irrigation has also depleted groundwater and, in some states, raised the concentration of fluoride or arsenic in the remaining groundwater.

Q6. Explain the methods of fishing practised in India and the factors that affect the development of fishing. [7 marks]

1. Inshore and coastal fishing is done from catamarans, plank-built boats and small mechanised boats with gill nets, shore seines and traps, usually on day trips.
2. Deep sea fishing uses larger mechanised trawlers that stay out for longer periods and carry ice or cold storage on board.
3. Pelagic species are taken with drift nets and encircling nets near the surface, while demersal species are taken with bottom trawls and line gear close to the sea bed.
4. Inland fishing uses nets, traps and hooks in rivers and tanks, and ponds and reservoirs are increasingly stocked and harvested as culture fisheries.
5. The dependence of inshore fishing on traditional, non-mechanised craft limits the catch and the distance that can be covered, and deep-sea fishing needs costly mechanised boats and cold storage.
6. The lack of adequate port, processing and marketing infrastructure in some coastal stretches reduces the value realised from the catch.
7. Over-fishing in inshore waters can deplete fish stocks, which is why closed seasons, minimum mesh-size regulation and protection of breeding grounds are used to allow stocks to recover.

Q7. Analyse the factors affecting the development of fishing in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. [5 marks]

1. Andhra Pradesh has a long Bay of Bengal coastline combined with numerous inland rivers, tanks and reservoirs, which supports both marine and a strong inland and brackish-water fishery.
2. Kerala's narrow continental shelf on the Arabian Sea coast brings rich fishing grounds close inshore, which, together with numerous small fishing harbours, has sustained a long tradition of marine fishing.
3. In both states, the length and configuration of the coastline and the availability of harbours and cold storage determine how much of the marine resource can be harvested.
4. The skill, capital and equipment of fishing communities, for example whether boats are traditional and inshore-based or mechanised for deep-sea fishing, affect the volume and value of the catch.
5. Access to backwaters and estuaries (notably in Kerala) and to tanks and reservoirs (notably in Andhra Pradesh) allows these states to supplement marine output with inland and brackish-water fisheries.

Q8. Discuss the environmental consequences of using coal and petroleum as conventional sources of energy in India. [7 marks]

1. Burning coal and petroleum releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
2. Thermal power stations fuelled by coal or petroleum draw large volumes of water for cooling and discharge it back at a higher temperature, causing thermal pollution of the rivers and water bodies into which it is released.
3. Burning coal in thermal plants produces fly ash in large quantities, which must be collected and disposed of and can otherwise pollute surrounding land and air.
4. Combustion of both fuels adds particulate matter, sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere, worsening air quality in and around industrial and power-generating centres.
5. Because about 80 per cent of India's coal is non-coking, bituminous grade, its combustion for power is widespread, multiplying these effects across the country rather than confining them to a few sites.
6. Petroleum extraction and refining add the further risk of oil spills and refinery effluent, affecting soil and water quality near extraction and processing sites.
7. These consequences are a key reason, alongside the exhaustible nature of fossil fuel reserves, for the recognised need to promote non-conventional energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass, which generally cause far less pollution.

Q9. Evaluate the need for a second Green Revolution and state its strategies. [7 marks]

1. The original Green Revolution package of high-yielding varieties, chemical fertiliser and assured irrigation succeeded mainly where canal and tube-well irrigation already existed, chiefly Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
2. This concentration of success created sharp regional disparity in agricultural development, with rainfed tracts of eastern and central India left behind until the 1970s.
3. Even where the Green Revolution succeeded, it brought problems such as groundwater depletion, waterlogging and salinisation from intensive irrigation, and heavy pesticide use that damaged soil quality.
4. Dependence on a narrow set of high-yielding cereal crops reduced the diversity of cropping and the resilience of farm incomes to a single season's harvest.
5. From the 1980s, the Planning Commission therefore turned attention to agro-climatic planning, begun in 1988, to bring balanced agricultural development to rainfed areas that irrigation-based technology had bypassed.
6. A second strategy also emphasised diversification of agriculture into animal husbandry, poultry, horticulture, livestock rearing and aquaculture, to raise rural incomes and reduce dependence on a single crop.
7. Taken together, a second Green Revolution was needed because the first, while raising national self-reliance in foodgrains, had left large parts of the country and large categories of farmers without a comparable gain, and had introduced environmental costs of its own that demanded correction.

Key takeaways

• Environment should be managed as capital whose productive capacity must be maintained, not treated only as a resource to be exploited for immediate development.
• Land-use categories (forest, net sown area, fallow, pasture, non-agricultural use) together make up the reporting area, which differs from the fixed geographical area.
• Shrinking and fragmented landholdings reduce farming efficiency; consolidation, ceilings and cooperative farming are standard remedies.
• India's utilisable water resource is only about 1,122 cubic km a year, and agriculture already uses about 89 to 92 per cent of surface and groundwater drawn.
• Modern irrigation methods (sprinkler, drip) save water compared with flooding, but perennial canal irrigation, while reliable, risks waterlogging and salinisation if overused.
• Watershed management and rainwater harvesting conserve water locally and depend heavily on community participation for success.
• Intensity of cropping, measured as gross cropped area over net sown area, is a key land-saving strategy in a land-scarce, labour-abundant country.
• The Green Revolution raised foodgrain output sharply but was initially confined to irrigated states, which is why the second Green Revolution emphasised agro-climatic balance and diversification into animal husbandry and horticulture.
• Fishing in India divides into marine (inshore and deep sea, pelagic and demersal) and inland fisheries, with Andhra Pradesh and Kerala illustrating different combinations of marine and inland fishery development.
• Minerals are classified as ferrous or non-ferrous metallic, and fuel or other non-metallic; conventional sources (coal, petroleum, nuclear, hydel, thermal) dominate power generation, while non-conventional sources (solar, wind, biomass, tidal, geothermal) are being promoted for their lower pollution and renewability despite higher cost and site limits.

Test yourself

What is the difference between culturable (cultivable) waste and current fallow?

Culturable (cultivable) waste is cultivable land left uncultivated for more than five years, while current fallow is land left uncultivated for one agricultural year or less, usually to recover fertility.

Why does land matter more to those dependent on agriculture than to those in industry or services?

Agriculture is a purely land-based activity, so land contributes proportionately more to agricultural output than to output in other sectors, and quality of land directly affects agricultural productivity.

Name one advantage and one disadvantage of perennial canal irrigation.

Advantage: it gives an assured, year-round water supply allowing multiple cropping. Disadvantage: continuous flooding of fields can raise the water table and cause waterlogging and soil salinisation.

Why is dryland farming confined mostly to areas with less than 75 cm annual rainfall?

Below this rainfall level, soil moisture is too limited for most crops, so only hardy, drought-resistant crops such as ragi, bajra and gram, grown with soil-moisture conservation, can be sustained.

What are the strategies of the second Green Revolution?

Agro-climatic planning for rainfed areas, begun in 1988, diversification of agriculture, and harnessing resources for dairy farming, poultry, horticulture, livestock rearing and aquaculture.

Give two leading states for iron ore production in India.

Odisha and Jharkhand are among the leading states, together with Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Goa, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

What is the main limitation of solar and wind energy as sources of power?

Their output is intermittent (depending on sunlight or wind speed) and the generating technology has a high initial installation cost, which limits their current share of total power generation.

Distinguish between pelagic and demersal fishing.

Pelagic fishing targets species living near the sea surface or in mid-water, while demersal fishing targets species living on or near the sea bed.