Farmers greeted the high-level technical team constituted by the Supreme Court to assess the ground reality in the Cauvery basin in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu during their visit to the delta districts of Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam on Monday.
Asking Karnataka to adhere to the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal orders and constitution of an empowered Cauvery Management Board were the only hope of farmers, they said.
“Instead of welcoming you with a bouquet of flowers, we are forced to receive you with a bunch of withered crops,” farmers told the team in a village in Nagapattinam district reflecting the reality staring at the delta farmers who had lost the kuruvai for five successive years and this year's samba crop in danger of perishing soon.
At Perugavazhndan in Tiruvarur district, Mannargudi S. Ranganathan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association explained what the lost kuruvai meant for the farmers and how they would be devastated if the samba too withered for want of water.
“We need at least 45 tmcft of water to save the standing samba crop in the delta over the next 120 days. Karnataka needs to give 134 tmc ft between June 12 and September 30. Less than 40 per cent has been realised in Tamil Nadu and that is why we have lost kuruvai and samba ,” he observed.
Ground water table in the delta has gone well below 450 feet paving the way for sea water intrusion. We have lost at least 3.5 lakh acres of kuruvai every year; i.e., 15 lakh tonnes a year. Besides, the livelihood of landless farm labourers has been lost enormously causing major migration of labour, he said and sought proper management of Karnataka reservoirs.
Elsewhere, various farmers organisations submitted petitions to the team and listed their woes. Agriculture Minister R. Durai Kannu, MLAs from the ruling party as well as the Opposition for once came on a single platform to highlight the delta’s cause at all places where the team got down for a spot assessment.
The team interacted with farmers in Chozhagankudikadu and Chokkanavoor in Thanjavur district, Perugavazhndan, Kovilur, Siddhamalli, Nedumkulam in Tiruvarur district, Karunganni and Killikkudi in Nagapattinam district.
The team on visit included G.S. Jha, Chairman, Central Water Commission, S. Masood Hussain, Member, CWC, R.K. Gupta, Chief Engineer, CWC, S.K. Prabhakar, Principal Secretary, PWD, K. Satyagopal, Commissioner for Revenue Administration, Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Agricultural Production Commissioner and Agriculture Secretary, Subramanian, Chairman, Cauvery Technical Cell, as also representatives from the governments of Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry.
Speaking to the media, Mr. Jha said that farmers and officials had provided detailed situation reports and have listed their expectations. The team would go into details of their representations and analyse the situation prior to submission of the report to the Supreme Court on October 17.
Mr. Jha added that the team had sized up the ground reality but noted that he was not in a position to share the outcome of the analysis yet done. The team would be objectively discharging its duty as mandated by the Supreme Court, he noted.
