Mission Kakatiya a blessing for farmers

HYDERABAD: A distressed farm sector that suffered a long dry spell in August appears to have a reason to cheer with regard to irrigation opportunities. The total live storage capacity of minor irrigation tanks in the state has increased by 2.4 thousand million cubic feet (TMCft) in the current monsoon. While this is being viewed as a silver lining amid fears of another drought, the government has claimed some of the credit saying the improvement in water availability is thanks to Mission Kakatiya, its flagship scheme of rejuvenating village tanks.
Even the groundwater table has shown a marginal rise with the spruced up tanks and lakes receiving considerably good inflows.
"It is just a humble start and there is still a long way to go. While the agriculture scenario is certainly a cause of concern with south-west monsoon offering a mixed bag of a dry spell and patches of good rains, it is a motivating message from Mission Kakatiya," said minor irrigation chief engineer Bhupathiraju Nagendra Rao.
Studies commissioned by both government and social organizations such as Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV) reflect a marginal improvement in storage capacity of tanks and rise in groundwater levels.
"In principle, Mission Kakatiya is a good initiative and we cannot deny the fact that it has started showing results," said Kiran Kumar Vissa, state executive member of RSV.
"But, the concern is that there are gaps in terms of execution of such huge scale initiative that need to be addressed. The absence of public participation in the programme and lack of checks and balances makes the programme prone to corruption," he added.
With over 75,000 tanks in 1956-57, tank irrigation enjoyed a 65 per cent share in Telangana's irrigation. This share drastically fell to 10 per cent in 2012-13 with most lake beds and their catchment areas being encroached. The total live storage capacity of all tanks originally was 160 TMCft and water utilization used to be up to 222 TMCft. The live storage capacity of village tanks, over the years, fell to an abysmal 60 TMCft in 2012-13.
After the TRS government launched the ambitious Mission Kakatiya in 2015 to rejuvenate 46,531 village tanks, officials now say the total live storage capacity of such tanks has gone up by 2.4 tmcft, taking it to 62.4 tmcft by the end of this August. The government claims that 7,522 tanks have been revitalized so far in the programme's first phase, with the second phase of Mission Kakatiya now underway.
"The immediate target is to reach 100 tmcft storage capacity from where we can take it forward," said Sridhar Rao Deshpande, officer on special duty to irrigation minister T Harish Rao.
Nagendra Rao said apart from desilting of tanks, the programme involves repairing of feeder channels, restreaming of canals and repairing of sluice gates and weirs to prevent leakages.
"Desilting is a small part of the whole exercise, while other repair works play more important role. For instance, we could improve live storage of Chintal Bori lake in Adilabad by 30 million cubic feet by repairing of the weir and its feeder channel," Nagendra Rao said. So far, 200 such feeder channels have been repaired in the state, he added.
As far as groundwater table is concerned, the state groundwater department said Telangana till August end, received 548 mm of rain against normal rainfall of 585 mm which is 6 per cent less than the normal for the period. However, the average groundwater level in August 2016 was 12.47 metres whereas the same was 12.32 metres during the same period last year. The minor irrigation department said the marginal improvement was because of Mission Kakatiya tanks which resulted in additional recharge of the groundwater table.