India's government Thursday approved spending nearly US $8 billion over five years to develop infrastructure for rural irrigation to boost crop productivity in a country where farmers rely largely on annual rains. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet gave its nod to allocate 500 billion rupees ($7.9 billion) for the project that aims to help India's 120 million-odd farmers, many of whom lack access to irrigation and struggle with deficient monsoon rains.
"The scheme's main objective is to increase cultivable area under irrigation, improve on-farm water use efficiency and to introduce sustainable water conservation practices," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at a press conference in New Delhi.
He added that 53 billion rupees (US $836 million) had been allocated for the scheme in the current fiscal year ending March 2016.
The latest decision, which stems from one of Modi's poll promises before he stormed to power last year, comes after a wave of suicides by debt-laden farmers who suffered damage to their crops due to bad weather.
In the last few months, anger has also mounted in rural areas over Modi's land reform bill, which the government says is needed to speed up economic growth, but political rivals say favours big business at the expense of poor farmers.
About two-thirds of India's population of 1.2 billion people depend on agriculture for their livelihood.