Irrigation and drainage system is artificial application of water to land and artificial removal of excess water from land, respectively. Some land requires irrigation or drainage before it is possible to use it for any agricultural production; other land profits from either practice to increase production. Some land, of course, does not need either. Although either practice may be, and both often are, used for non-agricultural purposes to improve the environment, this article is limited to their application to agriculture. Irrigation and drainage improvements are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Often both may be required together to assure sustained, high-level production of crops. The present book ‘Irrigation and Drainage’ will be a very useful reference source to the students, teachers, researchers, policy makers, administrators and managers of irrigation and drainage as well as rural development. It should particularly appeal to the technocrat, the social scientists, economists, bureaucrats and the concerned citizens associated with working in similar project the world over.
