Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Friday said that it intends to restore tank-based irrigation system in the newly created state, whose location on the Deccan plateau makes canals unusable.
“The native wisdom of harnessing local resources for development has ended with the rule of Kakatiyas and Asaf Jahis... With the neglect of tanks over the years, over 84 per cent of the sown area is dependent on well irrigation,” CM K. Chandrashekhar Rao told the 14th Finance Commission.
Over 84 per cent of the net sown area in the state is dependent on well irrigation. However, falling groundwater levels has made agriculture a gamble in the monsoon.
In order to replenish the depleting water table and provide irrigation faciliity to more farmland, the CM said the government has drawn up a plan to restore the 48,000 tanks in the state as a lasting solution.
He said that the neglect of Telangana has been brought out vividly in a study by the Planning Commission which observed that balanced development of the state had become a casuality and regional imbalances went on increasing due to lop sided policies.
The Twelfth Five-Year Plan document by the Planning Commission has categorised two districts in the state, namely, Khammam and Mahbubnagar as ‘Most Hungry.’
With recurrent natural calamities and rising input costs, he explained that agriculture in the state is in dire straits driving farmers to suicides, the incidence of which is one of the highest in the country.
