Mission Kakatiya, the Telangana government’s flagship project to revive water tanks for irrigation and other purposes, has received another shot in the arm with the renowned University of Chicago’s Tata Development Centre coming forward to evaluate its impact on agricultural, environmental and economic outcome.
The university has sought the permission of the government to take up in-depth study of the project to compare the changes that have occurred in villages served by the rehabilitated water tanks. It has also offered to study tanks that have made the largest impact and how water from them is being distributed.
Over a period of two years, the university researchers will also look into the improvements in any of the agricultural output for key crops such as rice, cotton and maize, income of farmers and the water table levels before and after the tank repairs were carried out.
G. Malsur, Telangana Irrigation and Command Area Development Commissioner, said that the government was studying the proposal and a memorandum of agreement would be signed as the study could help in further improving the project implementation.
A team of researchers from Indian and US universities, including Anup Malani and Guha Supratik from University of Chicago and Aprajit Mahajan from the University of California-Berkeley, will be involved with funding by the Tata Trusts.
Dr. Malsur explained that the university has also expressed its wish to recruit a graduate student in South Asian history to write a report on the historical and cultural role of water tanks in the Telangana State, focusing on the lineage of these tanks from the Kakatiya times to the present.
The team has offered to provide services of five full-time fellows from the International Innovation Corps (IIC) to help implementation of the water tank rehabilitation scheme, promote better water management and tank maintenance practices among farmers and fishermen, training to enable them to access markets, etc.
The study will focus on tanks that were not repaired in the first two years of Mission Kakatiya to conduct a baseline survey of agricultural output before a tank was rehabilitated. The objective is to understand the changes in agricultural output that would have occurred in the absence of the project, especially in the light of consecutive drought years.
Tanks will be chosen randomly and satellite imagery will be used to study rainfall, health of the water table and agricultural output. Tanks will be divided into two groups – those to be repaired from October 2016- March 2017 and from July 2017 -October 2017.
After 2016 kharif, a baseline survey of tanks, aquifers and farms associated with the first group will be taken up and post 2017 kharif, an endline survey of the same tanks, aquifers and farms will be taken up for results by December 2017. The exercise will be repeated the next year for the second group of tanks.
