Rains cheer farmers before kar harvest

The kar season cultivation, the first crop season every year that usually commences in the first week of June, was delayed for more than a month due to the precarious storage levels in the dams.

According to farmer Ganesan of Kurichi village near Tirunelveli, instead of encouraging farmers to commence seasonal cultivation, officials frightened them saying that government would not provide any risk compensation if crops grown were damaged due to drought.

This attitude of government officials resulted in more than half of the total paddy cultivating land remaining barren during this kar season.

Farmers also blamed the government machinery for delaying water release from dams.

Bahirathan, a farmer of Pappakudi village in Tirunelveli district said, “Government released water from the Papanasam dam for kar season cultivation on July 5 instead of the usual practice of releasing water in the first week of June when the first crop season of the year starts.”

Despite these odds, farmers started paddy cultivation over more than 30,000 acres this year, and are now hopeful of water as the continuous rains in the catchment areas of almost all major reservoirs in the district during the last one week have raised water levels in the dams.

As on Monday morning, Papanasam dam registered 5 mm of rain and had an inflow of 3231.94 cusecs that resulted in an increased water level at the dam by 3.40 ft.

Around 1005 cusecs of water for drinking and irrigation in Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi districts has been discharged from the Papanasam dam since Monday. Around 45 cusecs has been discharged from the Manimutharu dam that had an inflow of 190 cusecs. Against the water inflow of 386 cusecs, around 105 cusecs from the Kadananathi dam has been released for irrigation.

Water discharge for irrigation from the Ramanathi dam was 40 cusecs on Monday, while around 10 cusecs each was released for irrigation from the minor reservoirs of the Karuppanathi dam, Guntaru dam and Adavinainar dam.