Tight nexus or loose links? Rural emigration and borewell-irrigated agriculture in Karnataka (South India)

It is crucial to better understand the relationship between irrigated agriculture and migration. In India, irrigated agriculture, which keeps people busy and feeds their mouths, has undoubtedly contributed to the retention of the rural population. But for how long? Farmers’ low incomes and the environmental crisis could lead to a huge rural exodus. Yet, more positively, rural emigration can be driven by the desire to finance irrigation, since migrants' incomes can then be invested in drilling wells or equipping pipes. This is migration for productive purposes, not migration for poverty or destitution. Through fieldwork research in Karnataka, this article highlights the complex links between irrigated agriculture and what is perhaps better described as ‘circulation’ rather than migration. Both appear as one means among others to produce household livelihoods. Through indebtedness they are embedded in a system that includes all sorts of other activities and resources. Our field study leads us to reject the overly linear models, which are very common in the literature because of their intuitive aspect, such as “irrigation reduces/increases immigration”.