This year, the chances of substantial inflows into the Nagarjunasagar dam and from there into the left bank and right bank canals appear to be bright considering the current reservoirs positions upstream. Since it has been four years since the gates were last lifted due to poor inflows, the question is how have farmers managed during this period?
Quite well, it seems! Thanks to the modernisation programme taken up for the dam, main canals and channels in the last eight years, sufficient water has not only been made available to farmers but more than one lakh additional acres of land was brought under irrigation.
“We have used National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) satellite data to track water usage and agriculture operations where we found out that despite receiving less rains, farmers have coped up well. It is thanks to judicious use of available water, improved ground watertable and water made available to the tail-end regions,” explains Project Director G. Malsur.
Canal lining to arrest seepage losses, muck removal in tunnels, deep cuts and de-silting from entire canal bed helped increase the water carrying capacity so much so that the flow of water from the dam to Palair reservoir -- of about 130-km., was reduced from 72 hours to 48 hours.
Measuring devices
Better water management practices by putting measuring devices at every water user association point and five lift irrigation schemes benefited an ayacut of 96,447 acres - Nalgonda (51,593), Suryapet (28,448) and Khammam (16,406) districts.
With Irrigation Minister Harish Rao monitoring the work on a daily basis, the ₹2,100 crore water sector improvement project with 48% loan by the World Bank, and taken up in 2010, is almost complete as per schedule. Under this, work on 15 main and branch canals, 25 distributory channels, 60 WUAs, five lift irrigations and dam safety were taken up.
Improved outputs
Mr. Malsur reminds that rehabilitation of Nagarjunasagar canal network is not only about efficient water supply but also about promotion of advanced crop, water and pest management techniques, training farmers, horticulture crops demonstrations and so on. This has helped in improved outputs and more area coming under agriculture.
Of the total ayacut of 6.57 lakh acres, about five lakh acres was getting irrigation water earlier leaving a gap of 1.50 lakh acres due to poor maintenance and damaged canal network even when water was available. Post the work, it is a never before high of 6.14 lakh acres. This, when water availability in reservoir is only 35 TMC, excluding 20 TMC for drinking water, as against the allocation of 99.75 TMCs in 2017-18.
Drip irrigation
More interesting is that if 1 TMC is said to feed 7,000-7,500 acres, the impact of repairs has been that 1 TMC has fed upto 13,000 acres. “Only drip irrigation delivers the highest at 18,000 acres for 1 TMC water,” says Mr. Malsur. A study has revealed that up to 5% of farmers have turned towards less water requiring yet high value crops of chillies, cotton, maize, vegetables etc., away from paddy and likes. Apparently, there has been significant increase in yields of five major crops - paddy from 3149 kg/ha to 3910 kgs/ha, chillies from 3824 kgs/ha to 4444 Kg/ha, maize from 5014 kgs/ha to 7545 kgs/ha, groundnut from 1535 kgs/ha to 2084 kgs/ha.
The senior official, also the VC & MD of TS Mineral Development Corporation, said intervention programmes taken up as part of the project have helped farmers grow fodder in about 5% of cultivated area as against 3% earlier -- due to which calf mortality has come down.
