Cock Eyed View of Tank Irrigation

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Cock Eyed View of Tank Irrigation

• Results from a Study of Five Tanks in Anathpur
  District,
• Andhra Pradesh

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Brief Profile of the Tanks Studied
This tank provides water to four villages.
However I studied one village which has 70 of
the Ayacut land. (BorewellsOpenwells)
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Key Physical/Structural Problems Associated With
Tanks

• Catchment Cultivation
• Silting of Tank Bed
• Encroachment of Supply Channels
• Encroachment of Tank Bed
• Deterioration of Tank Bund
• Leaking Sluices

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Silting of Tank Bed

• Silting of tank bed is a common problem in all
  the tanks.
• Thummalakunta 7 Feet of Silting
• Gollapalli- 6 to 7 Feet of Silting
• Kethigani Cheruvu- 9 Feet of Silting
• Khambalapalli- 8-9 Feet of Silting
• The storage capacity of all the tanks has been
  reduced by half or more. If everything else was
  as before one would expect in such a case that
  the tanks would be overflowing. In actual, the
  past 20 years (the period coinciding with a
  massive rise in siltation) has also seen most
  tanks drying up.

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Silting of Tank Bed.

• There can be two explanations for this
  phenomenon-
• Either the overall rainfall has reduced
  dramatically
• Adequate runoff is not being generated due to
  other reasons.

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Silting of Tank Bed.

• While the cost of desiltation is high the
  benefits can be varied.
• The cost per acre of ayacut in case of
  Thumulkunta comes to as high as Rs. 40-50
  thousand per acre. This is half the actual value
  of land in the head reaches of the tank and equal
  to the value of the land in the tail reaches.
• Most programs allocate a small proportion of
  their rehabilitation budget for desilting. The
  rate of siltation is so high that all the
  capacity increase will be negated in a few year.
  This is because in the absence of a targeted
  program for desiltation the villagers have no
  capacity to remove the volume of silt coming in
  every year. Also the quality of the silt is not
  good.
• Cost is of desilting the tank bed area by 3 feet
  _at_ Rs.50 per tractor load(2.5cu.m.)

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Catchment Encroachment

• The catchment in all except one of the study
  tanks was almost completely cultivated.
• Cultivation of the catchment results in
• Heavy siltation of the tank bed.
• Holding precipitation which contributes in the
  tanks not filling up. In combination with
  groundwater overexploitation the combination is
  fatal for tanks.
• Removing encroachment or reducing them is crucial
  if any of the other measures of rehabilitation
  are going to have any effect.

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Two Questions on Catchment

• WHO OWNS LAND IN THE CATCHMENT?
• WHAT IS THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE PEOPLE IN THE
  CATCHMENT?

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Summarizing the Argument

• Two big ticket items of any rehabilitation
  strategy are impossible to work
• Catchment encroachment cannot be removed because
  the same people who own land in the command own
  land in the catchment. Also these lands are in
  most cases legal government pattas and would be
  impossible to take back.
• Desilting is prohibitively costly. In addition it
  is not much use in many tanks which do not fill
  up inspite of the heavy siltation. The villagers
  also do not have the economic capacity to desilt
  regularly which means that the tank will keep
  silting up after completion of desilting
  exercise.

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Cockeyed View of Tank Management

• Alternative views have been taken as to how best
  can the tanks be managed in the modern context
• Convert the tanks into percolation ponds. This
  has worked in states like Rajasthan and Gujarat
  and might work in South India.
• Promote fisheries as the prominent use of the
  tanks. The fishing contractor has the maximum
  incentive to maximize the Gross Tank Product.
• Link tanks to canals
• I will argue that these approaches do not work in
  the tanks I have studied and I then raise an
  alternative hypothesis as to how best to manage
  the tanks.

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Groundwater Hydrology in Hard Rock Areas
Clusters here would yield good water
Tubewells will yield water anywhere but the yield
would be low as no obvious fracture zone present
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Spatial Distribution of Tubewells in
Thummallakunta
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Spatial Distribution of Tubewells in Kethigani
Cheruvu
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Cropping Pattern of Tubewell Owners
Water Selling at Per Hour Rate
Minimum Water Selling
Water Selling Rampant
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Cropping Pattern of Water Buyers
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STRENGTH OF WATER MARKET
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FISHERIES LED TANK REHABILTATION
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Problems With Fisheries Led Revival

• I found a host of issues with a fishing led
  revival strategy
• There are only 3 tanks in which regular fishing
  contracts are given. Out of these three there is
  only one tank in which the contract is given out
  every year. In the other 2 the contracts are once
  every 2-3 years.
• The person taking the fishing contract simply did
  not have the muscle to challenge the Ayacut
  farmers. There was no doubt that the tanks are
  the exclusive property of the Ayacutdaars and
  fishing is taken as only an incidental use of the
  stored water and not a primary use.

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Problems With Fisheries Led Revival.

• The economic returns from fisheries in a small
  tank are very low. A typical analysis of cost and
  returns from fisheries for a small tank are as
  follows

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What Then Is The Alternative?
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An Alternative View

• The solutions to management of tanks are
  essentially based on conflicts between different
  stakeholders. Giving control of tank management
  to one group of stakeholders (well owners in the
  case of percolation and fishing contractors in a
  fishing led revival) creates disadvantages for
  the other stakeholders which are numerous.
• The tanks as the exist today lead to highly
  inefficient use of the available precipitation in
  the area. By storing massive quantities of water
  they promote islands of water intensive crops
  like sugarcane and paddy in a region which
  receives rainfall similar to what is received in
  large parts of Rajasthan.
• Land holding pattern in the tanks are also
  unfavorably disposed towards the poorest families
  in the village. So reviving tanks would result in
  widening the income gap between the farmers.

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Advantages of a Catchment Led Revival Strategy
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Impact of Watershed Project on Rainfed Yields
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Limitations

• I put forward the idea that a catchment led
  rehabilitation is the best way to manage tanks
  only as a hypothesis for the following reasons
• Only 5 tanks have been studied. There are 300
  tanks in Hindupur Taluk alone.
• Tanks in the Rayelseema region are totally
  different from those in costal AP or Tamil Nadu.
  In these areas tanks fill up regularly and much
  of their catchment is under forest cover. The
  strategies in these areas could be totally
  different from the ones promoted here.

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• THANK YOU

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TUBEWELL DETAILS
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Problems With Fisheries Led Revival.

• The economic return from fisheries is just not
  enough to influence the contractor to go for a
  desilting exercise- the key issue in a well
  performing tank.
• He also has minimal interest in selling any water
  to the tail end farmers because the cost of
  transporting water to the far away areas would be
  prohibitively high (the distances can be 1-2 kms.
  away from the tank bund).
• For the contractor the best interest would be to
  ignore any water supply to the head reach farmers
  as well. These farmers are forced to grow paddy
  once water fills in the tank. Supplying water for
  paddy in the seepage area (which can be as much
  as half or more of the total command area) would
  be detrimental to the fishing contractors
  interest as he would get reduced yields.