Irrigation for Crops, Govt Caught Between Devil and the Deep Sea
Government weighs irrigation demand as officials stress conserving water for drinking needs
Hyderabad: A mid-season surge in planting paddy is learnt to have resulted in increasing pressure on the irrigation department to ensure adequate water reaches farmers growing rice this Kharif crop season.
With the recent rain not only resulting in good inflows into smaller, but also inflows into several reservoirs, there appears to be a perception that the government will have no option but to provide irrigation water for the Kharif crops, particularly paddy.
However, the reality appeared otherwise.
Sources in the irrigation department acknowledged that there was increasing pressure from elected representatives and farmers for irrigation, at least for transplanting paddy. “If water is released for transplanting, or initial operations, then the question will come why not later and if the government was not able to provide irrigation throughout the crop season, why did it do so in the beginning,” the sources said.
Though the agriculture and irrigation and other ministers have been pointing out the need to conserve all available water to meet drinking water needs till at least July of next year, there has not been a clear directive or a categorical announcement from the government so far that water will not be supplied for irrigating paddy, or for that matter, any other crop this Kharif season.
The government, sources said, was pinning its hopes on a late monsoon revival, and that it would not have to bite the no irrigation this year bullet, but that hope, at least for now, remains a big uncertainty.
“Until a clear announcement is made that there will be no irrigation water for any crop, farmers will expect irrigation. And the pressure on the irrigation department is only expected to increase once the now tapering-off rain spell makes way for a prolonged dry period,” an official said.
It was learnt that despite the pressure for water release, officials in charge of various reservoirs had been told not to entertain such ‘requests’ for now. Sources said that the government was finding itself caught in a cleft stick – it could not make what could be a politically sensitive ‘no irrigation’ declaration for the farmer’s favourite crop, and neither could it say it could provide irrigation.
