COMMENTARY
Rejuvenating Tanks in Telangana M Dinesh Kumar, Nitin Bassi, K Sivarama Kishan, Shourjomoy Chattopadhyay, Arijit Ganguly
“Mission Kakatiya” is an ambitious project launched by the Government of Telangana to rejuvenate 47,000 tanks in the state by 2020. This article argues that it would be the repetition of the old historical mistake to approach the issue without taking into consideration the hydrological and ecological aspects. Picking up only those tanks which have water generated in their catchments would save a lot of precious money.
A
griculture is the primary source of income for 78% of the population of the newly carved state of Telangana, but currently it produces only 30% of the total income of the state (Pingle 2011). Eighty-five percent of the cultivated area is rain-fed; tank irrigation still remains one of the major support for agriculture (Deccan Chronicle 2015). Marginal- and small-holdings constitute 86% of total agriculture holdings in the state, making agriculture a subsistence source of livelihood for majority of the population (Directorate of Economics and Statistics 2015). Telangana has 47,907 tanks with an irrigation potential of 2,263,498 acres spread over 10 districts. Between 1956 and 2001, there has been a reduction in the tank-irrigated area in the range of 4.5 lakh acres (Nag 2011). Currently, the state statistics claim that only 37% of the potential tank-irrigated area is served by the tanks in the state. Mission Kakatiya
M Dinesh Kumar (
[email protected]) is executive director, Nitin Bassi is senior researcher, and K Sivarama Kishan, Shourjomoy Chattopadhyay and Arijit Ganguly are research officers at the Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy, Hyderabad.
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At the end of 2014, the Government of Telangana launched an ambitious project, titled Mission Kakatiya that aims at rejuvenating the 47,000 tanks and lakes spread over nine districts of the state by 2020; to bring them back to the past glory, the glory they had enjoyed during the rule of the Kakatiya dynasty. A notable achievement during this dynastic period was the construction of reservoirs for irrigation (now known as “tanks”) in the uplands, and around 5,000 of them were built by warrior families subordinate to the Kakatiya rulers. This dramatically altered the possibilities of development in the sparsely populated dry areas. The mission envisaged enhancing the agriculture-based income for small and marginal farmers by accelerating the development of minor irrigation infrastructure,
strengthening community-based irrigation management, and adopting a comprehensive programme for restoration of tanks (GoT 2015). The government has prioritised the restoration of minor irrigation tanks (Table 1) to restore and enhance their effective storage capacity to 255 TMC (7,225 MCM), so as to fully utilise Telangana’s allocation of 255 TMC of water from the Godavari and Krishna rivers. The restoration works sanctioned involve de-silting of tank beds, repair of sluices, feeder channels, etc, and are to be completed in five years. Table 1: Distribution of Tanks in Telangana Districts and No of Tanks Considered for Phase I of Mission Kakatiya S No District
Total Tanks
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
5,939 3,951 5,839 4,517 3,251 7,941 2,851 7,480 4,762 46,531
Karimnagar Adilabad Warangal Khammam Nizamabad Medak Rangareddy Mehaboobnagar Nalgonda Total
Tanks in Phase I
1,188 790 1,168 903 650 1,588 570 1,496 952 9,306
Source: Government of Telangana.
The initiatives to rejuvenate the tanks in the region are not new. There were many attempts in the past to rejuvenate the tanks in the erstwhile undivided Andhra Pradesh (AP). However, this is the first attempt by any state government to rejuvenate such a large number of waterbodies in one go, using funds from its own budget. Many earlier attempts at rejuvenation were all done with the support of funding from the World Bank, the ADB or the European Union. These largely involved civil works such as strengthening the embankments, construction/repair of waste weir/sluice, lining of canals, cleaning supply channels and clearing jungle. Then, this was garnished with new water users’ associations (WUA)! The underlying assumption was that the tanks were degraded because the tank management institutions that existed in the past collapsed (with the demolition of the zamindari system and introduction of the ryotwari system, and due to a few other factors), and that once WUA s (of ayacut farmers) are created things would fall in place. It was also assumed
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make after huge public expenditure. Already, there are reports on large-scale corruption involving contractors and some officials from the irrigation department, and poor implementation of the scheme. In some cases, contractors are charged with not having adequate resources to undertake de-silting, and, in many other cases, deepening works. Earlier research by Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy (IRAP) in undivided AP, with detailed field surveys in Kurnool, Nizamabad and Vizianagaram, had shown that there has been an excessively high degree of degradation of tanks in the past four decades or so. Further, two important processes are altering the hydrology of these tanks. First is intensive use of groundwater in the catchment (through bore wells), which reduces the base flows (or groundwater outflow into the streams) that contribute to the tank inflows. Second, the increased cultivation facilitated by access to wells for irrigation in the catchment, led to run-off from the catchment getting captured by the farm bunds and used in situ. In many areas, like in northern Karnataka, there is a lot of plantation of water guzzling Figure 1: Gross Irrigated Area by Sources (2012–13), Telangana % Gross irrigated area
Karnataka and AP (Batchelor et al 2002). Their study showed how intensive watershed work and increased groundwater draught in the catchments reduced the tank inflows. Ignoring all these factors, the blame eventually went to the lackadaisical attitude of the agency towards building WUA s (though there is no denial of the fact that this was also done mechanistically)! Coming back to Mission Kakatiya, a budget allocation of `2,016 crore and `2,083 crore was made for 2014–15 and 2015–16, respectively. It appears, even after several years of experience with tank rehabilitation, we seem to be repeating those historical mistakes of following a pure civil engineering approach with no attention being paid to hydrology and ecology. The focus is on earthwork, waste weir construction, canal lining, etc, and more of these structural interventions essentially mean more funds for such projects. Though it is a noble idea to make water available to distressed populations in the state, who had invested in unsuccessful bore wells in this hard rock region, the approach seems to miss out on the fact that mere de-silting or deepening of tanks may not lead to overall increase in water availability. As a matter of fact, none of these interventions can alter the hydrology of the tank catchments. Unfortunately, such projects pass through the scrutiny of economists and planners, with myriads of exaggerated benefits such as direct irrigation, groundwater recharge, nutrient rich silt as fertilisers, fish production, etc. One only wonders how the estimates of irrigation potential are arrived at when one does not really know how much inflows these tanks would receive. In reality, almost 85% of Telangana is irrigated from wells and only about 7% from tanks (Figure 1). Further, 90% of the tanks in Telangana are small tanks with a command area of less than 100 acres and together they make only one-third of the total tank-irrigated area. A total of 3,864 large tanks account for 67% of the tankirrigated area (Figure 2). If it is so, one needs to understand the economic rationale behind picking up all the tanks for rehabilitation. Thus, it needs to be seen what difference these renovated tanks can
85.00
100.00
10.00
5.39
7.26
2.35 1.00
Lift irrigation Canals Tanks Goundwater and other sources Source: Authors’ own analysis using Season and Crop Report, Andhra Pradesh 2012–13.
Figure 2: Number of Tanks and Irrigated Area by Tanks in Telangana (2012–13) No of tanks/irrigated area (ha)
that the WUAs would de-silt the tanks periodically (to restore their capacity), clear the supply channels and maintain the water distribution channels, and equitably distribute the water, and that the performance of the tanks would henceforth be better, with larger inflows from catchments and larger impoundment of water. This almost became an axiom in the development and policy circles. It is intriguing that no scholar really bothered to find out why in the past no village community came forward to persuade the government to “rehabilitate” a system which, it was claimed, was offering such great benefits to the poor, but was brought to disuse by external factors, through some of the civil works mentioned above. The real issue is that the tanks and tank management institutions of South India were so glorified that few questioned the validity of two underlying theories in tank management programmes: first, what civil works can do to alter the tank hydrology, and second, what the impact of institutions on tank hydrology and their physical performance is, in the current scheme of things. All these approaches inherently consider village communities as hapless spectators to the assault on their tanks by external agents, who encroach tank supply channels, tank beds and catchments, and not as party to this. But, this is far from the reality. As noted by Esha Shah (2008), the tanks in South India stood testimony to the increasingly extractive statecraft involving coerced labour, highly oppressive caste systems, the expropriation of surplus by elites, and were symbols of enormous money and muscle power enjoyed by feudal landlords and warlords. Nevertheless, the outcome of these interventions was that these tanks hardly performed any better than they did in the past few decades. The major problem was the inadequate inflow from their catchments. But, there was hardly any systematic and scholarly attempt to understand “where the water was disappearing” or in other words, what was causing reduction in inflows into the tanks from their catchments, with the exception of the one sponsored by the Department for International Development in
12,00,000 1,00,000
Irrigated area (ha)
80,000 60,000 40,000
Number
20,000 0
Large Tanks Small Tanks Source: Authors’ own analysis using Season and Crop Report, Andhra Pradesh 2012–13.
trees, such as Eucalyptus, in the catchment, which leave no water downstream (these trees act like pumps, suck the water from the deep strata and grow very fast). This is indicated by the negative correlation between: (i) density of wells in the catchment and rate of reduction in tank performance, and (ii) cropping intensity 31
COMMENTARY
and rate of reduction in tank performance. The tanks whose catchments did not experience cropping intensification and increase in irrigation wells over time continue to perform well (Kumar and Vedantam 2016). Impacts of Tank Restoration The Government of Telangana ideates the following gains due to the expansion of irrigated area to cover the gap ayacut: (i) impact of technology through adoption of resource conservation-cum-production technologies when the project is fully implemented; (ii) diversification to cover irrigated area under high-value and low water-intensive crops such as chillies, maize and vegetables; (iii) development of fisheries; (iv) improvement of livestock; (v) reduction in waterlogged area; (vi) increase in groundwater levels and water quality, thereby getting lands beyond the command area under bore well irrigation; and (vii) power-savings due to the reduced need for well irrigation that is currently used to supplement the insufficient tank water. Some of
these projections of future benefits are based on unrealistic assumptions. For instance, how does one expect waterlogging in a region where groundwater resources are mined? How does one expect that farmers would grow high value crops, with improved water availability, when it is clearly shown that paddy is the most preferred crop in the gravity irrigation systems in Telangana? With dewatered aquifers, it is quite likely that as a result of de-silting of tank beds, the percolation of water would increase. But, this would be at the expense of direct irrigation from tanks. One can obviously see some gaps in the way the project is conceptualised. With just 15 months into the programme, it is too early to measure the impacts. Nevertheless, a few academic studies are available which show the impacts of this much publicised scheme on certain aspects. A study by the University of Michigan on the impacts of Mission Kakatiya in two villages of Adilabad and Karimnagar districts found that the use of silt removed from the tank bed in the
agricultural fields led to a dramatic increase in crop production of up to 500%. The study also noted a high variation in production of cotton from two quintals for fields where silt was not applied to 15 quintals for the ones where it was applied (Hindu 2016a). A study by ICRISAT concluded that the silt recovered from the tanks helped in improving the moisture-retention capacity of farms. Due to an increase in yield of 1,000 kg per hectare for cotton, savings on fertilisers and pesticides in the range of `2,500 to `3,750 per hectare were observed1 (Hindu 2016b). As one can clearly see, these are surely not the major intended impacts of the project, and there are no studies so far looking at the hydrological impacts, especially on groundwater regime, and impacts on irrigated area, etc. Tank Rehabilitation The findings of the IRAP study on the impact of intensive groundwater use on tank hydrology have serious implications for the way tank rehabilitation programmes ADVERTISEMENTS
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should be conceptualised. Given the fact that only about 5% of the tanks are rehabilitated so far, what is needed at present is a systematic assessment of the catchment hydrology of remaining cascades, rather than doing rehabilitation “lock, stock and barrel,” in an effort to make it a “mass movement.” There is a need to pick up only those tanks which have enough water generated in their catchments. Unfortunately, there are no quick ways to assess the run-off generation potential of these tank catchments. The streams draining into these tanks are not gauged. But, going by the previous discussion, it is quite obvious that tanks which are characterised by intensive cultivation in their catchment with a high density of irrigation wells (both in the catchment and command), should be entirely excluded. For the rest, run-off has to be estimated using some standard methodologies for each tank cascade system. The runoff coefficient would depend on the catchment land cover, the soil conditions and the antecedent soil moisture. The usual practice in the minor irrigation departments is to use the “rational formula,” which uses the catchment area, a “run-off coefficient” and the average rainfall of the catchment, or the strange formula, which assumes a run-off coefficient based on whether a catchment is good or degraded. Such methods produce highly erroneous results. Therefore, internationally accepted scientific methods need to be used to estimate catchment run-off, which take into account the three factors mentioned above. Again, given the high year-to-year variation in the rainfall in these regions, we need to estimate the run-off for typical rainfall years (very wet year, normal year, and a very dry year), during which the pattern as well as the magnitude of rainfall changes significantly. Once the assessment is done, tank capacity enhancement should not be undertaken to capture the run-off that occurs in a very wet year, as is usually done. This is because in such a scenario, there would be no outflows from the tank even in the wettest year. The project planners need to recognise the fact that the outflows from these tanks ultimately end up in a Economic & Political Weekly
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river, which either drains into a tributary of Krishna or Godavari, depending on which basins they are located. The question then comes as to what to do with the tanks which are heavily degraded. De-silting would help, as it would produce good nutrient-rich soils for farmers. But, this is just a one-time activity, and it takes many years for good quality silt to get deposited in the tank bed. The initial enthusiasm of the farmers (who take their tractors to collect the silt from the tank bed) would fade very quickly after the first monsoon when they do not see much water in their tanks. For such tanks, there is no point in doing heavy earthwork for capacity enhancement, bund stabilisation, waste weir construction, etc, all of which involve huge capital investments. Contrary to this grave reality, the false argument, which is being paraded by some vested interests, is that the monsoon water just runs off un-captured and that we need to store it in the tanks, and for that their capacity needs to be enhanced. Yes, in some years water flows down. But, we need to recognise the fact that it is not going directly into the ocean. It enters the rivers downstream, and there are many large reservoirs built in Telangana and AP to capture the water in those rivers. Unless, the de-silted tanks in the region get water from exogenous sources, there is no way the region as a whole will witness increase in the tank-irrigated area. The simple reason is that the total water withdrawal in the region today exceeds the renewable water generated within the region, except for the water in the Godavari basin. The groundwater depletion and rampant well failures in many parts of Telangana is a manifestation of the precarious water balance of the region. By performing de-silting and deepening in some cases, the government may end up redistributing the water in the basins of the state with a resultant adverse impact in the downstream areas. Hence, instead of taking a popular approach, effort should be towards improving the overall water balance of the region. Further, this should be complemented with increasing the area under microirrigation systems, to manage irrigation water demand. But, the potential for vol lI no 34
adopting micro-irrigation systems, especially drips, would depend a lot on the cropping system in the command area. The Way Forward It is reported that the total budget for Mission Kakatiya is around `12,500 crore for five years. There is no doubt that even if 0.5% of this money is spent on doing a scientific assessment of the hydrology of the catchments, a lot of the precious money can be saved. By doing this, it would be possible to know which local catchments have surplus water (and with what probability) that can be stored by increasing the capacity of the cascade tanks, and which of the tanks would require imported water. But, conducting good hydrological assessments for good planning would take time. Internationally accepted scientific methods and tools should be used for proper hydrological assessments to quantify the amount of water available from the catchments, before embarking on such ambitious projects. Benefits would be accrued from well-conceived and wellimplemented projects. When the local people find real benefits from such projects—better irrigation, fish production, water for livestock—they will participate. But, before taking up various interventions for tank restoration, there should be proper conceptualisation to have greater clarity on what benefits are to be derived from them and how. Note 1
The study of tanks where works were completed showed that the addition of tank silt by 50 to 375 tractor loads per hectare improved available water content by 0.002 to 0.032 g in the soil. An increase in clay from 20% to 40% was noticed in the root zone. A decrease in coarse and fine sand was also noticed, while there was no change in pH, EC and organic carbon.
References Batchelor, Charles, Ashok Singh, M S Rama Mohan Rao and Johan Butterworth (2002): “Mitigating the Potential Unintended Impacts of Water Harvesting,” paper presented at the IWRA International Regional Symposium “Water for Human Survival,” Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi, 26–29 November. Deccan Chronicle (2015): “Telangana State to Restore 46,000 Water Tanks,” 22 January, www.deccanchronicle.com/150122/nation-current-affairs/article/telangana-state-restore-46000-water-tanks. Directorate of Economics and Statistics (2015): “Statistical Yearbook 2015,” Government of Telangana, Hyderabad. EDU (2016): “IIT Hyderabad, BITS Pilani and
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COMMENTARY NABARD Sign Agreement with Telangana Irrigation Dept,” EDU, 5 February. Government of Telangana (2015): “Mission Kakatiya,” viewed on 3 Jun 2016, https://missionkakatiya. cgg.gov.in/homemission#. Hindu (2016a): “Mission Kakatiya Already Showing Positive Results,” 5 January, http://www. thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/ mission-kakatiya-already-showing-positiveresults/article8066433.ece.
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— (2016b): “Mission Kakatiya Starting to Bear Fruit,” 18 April, www.thehindu.com/news/cities/hyderabad/mission-kakatiya-starting-tobear-fruit/article8488172.ece. Kumar, M Dinesh and N Vedantam (2016): “Groundwater Use in Decline in Tank Irrigation? Analysis from Erstwhile Andhra Pradesh,” Rural Water Systems for Multiple Uses and Livelihood Security, M D Kumar, A J James and Y Kabir (eds), Singapore: Elsevier.
Nag, K (2011): Battleground Telangana: Chronicle of an Agitation, New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers India. Pingle, G (2011): “Irrigation in Telangana: The Rise and Fall of Tanks,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 4, Nos 26–27, pp 123–30. Shah, Esha (2008): “Telling Otherwise: A Historical Anthropology of Tank Irrigation Technology in South India,” Technology and Culture, Vol 49, No 3, pp 652–74.
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