Crop Circles of another kind

I have been meaning to write this piece ever since the trip to Las Vegas. Got distracted by all the other curious stuff in the world and by getting to ride my favourite airplane I guess.

Some of the strange views out the porthole as we began our descent into Las Vegas were sights like these.

My first inclination was to wonder if we were flying over Area 51 or if there was a new cult of crop circle cutters in Nevada.

The answer is  far more prosaic, however. Circular farms are a result of an irrigation technique called Center Pivot irrigation, where the source of water is at the center and you have a boom anchored at the center that rotates around the source while delivering a spray over the farm. The equipment looks something like this.

The technique was invented in the 1940s and supposedly uses far less water than surface irrigation and furrow irrigation techniques.

So why do we not see more of these in India. Some of you are way ahead of me I am sure.
Center Pivot would appear to be viable where land is relatively cheap and you could afford to ignore the corners of each square and more importantly, water and its delivery mechanism is relatively more expensive. In a culture where we see water as free and the delivery mechanism, read electric motive power, also free, the corners are more valuable than the water.

Given the depleting water table and the looming fresh water shortage in India, we might want to consider how we educate the population on the value of water and electricity.