Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink! An ancient mariner says so in a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and probably the situation in the Rayalaseema region comprising Kurnool, Anantapur, Kadapa and Chittoor districts is very similar with regard to meeting irrigation needs.
There are major reservoirs like the Tungabhadra and the Srisailam dam and several projects to bring water to Kurnool and Anantapur districts, but it is the lack of unanimity among the Rayalaseema leaders and the will to converge on one project to maintain continuity in its execution and implementation for pro-rata sharing of available water that has become a major impediment.
The division of the State has added to the woes of people on either side of the River Krishna with both States zealously seeking their pound of flesh from the Srisailam reservoir and even going to the Krishna River Management Board to resolve their disputes.
HLC under-utilised
The Tungabhadra’s High Level Main Canal (HLC), which is supposed to bring 32 tmcft, yields only 21 tmcft due to the siltation of the dam and in the last 10 years, the district has been able to draw only between 10 tmcft and 15 tmcft, says Panyam Subramanyam, a retired engineer from TB dam.
For tapping this inter-State source to its capacity, modernisation of canals that began in 2008 should have been completed on time. But corruption at all levels and lack of continuous focus on execution due to change of governments in the State, the ₹470 crore project has been pre-closed with no promise of completing it in the near future.
Dependence on the Krishna
With the depletion of yield in the Tungabhadra dam, the focus of bringing water to the parched agricultural fields of Kurnool and Anantapur district fell on tapping River Krishna at the Srisailam reservoir, and the Hundri Neeva Sujala Sravanthi (HNSS) project implemented in 2012 and designed for 3,850 cusecs, hardly brings 2,200 cusecs to Anantapur.
The State government’s proposal to widen the HNSS canal’s carrying capacity to 6,000 cusecs also met with resistance from politicians in Anantapur district looking at the narrow advantages of serving their own constituencies by digging a parallel canal for the HLC.
Narrow-mindedness
While both the HNSS and HLC Parallel Canal projects can be taken up simultaneously benefiting the entire Rayalaseema region, just to get priority for their projects, some people’s representatives even went to the extent of opposing HNSS project in writing. Their argument is based on comparative operational costs of bringing water through these two canals. While water comes by gravity if a parallel canal to the HLC is dug, bringing 1 tmcft of water from the Srisailam reservoir to Anantapur by lifting water into HNSS canal costs close to ₹15 crore.
Irrigation experts, however, feel the proper distribution of available water resources to the existing ayacut is key to recovering investment in such lift irrigation projects. During the last monsoon, 30 tmcft of water was received in the HNSS canals, but proportionate benefits were not seen as ‘might is the right’ rule prevailed in the distribution. Unless proper water audit is continuously done, equitable distribution of the available resources is not possible.
