Question

disadvantages of mission kakatiya

Answer 1

Mission Kakatiya to revamp the chain of thousands of historic tanks in Telangana is a very laudable Project. But, it is a very cost intensive scheme. It is estimated that there are 46000 tanks and it needs Rs.22000 crore outlay to repair them. It works out to on an average Rs.48 lakhs per tank. Even smaller tanks than the average also may not cost less than Rs.20 lakhs. In addition, there are several problems associated with these tanks neglected over a period of 60 years. Some of the‘ shikam’ lands might have been tress passed; in some, flood flow canals might have become defunct; in some of them the silt could be saline and is not useful for applying to fields to add fertility; most of them may not get enough water to get filled in a rainy season in the changed rainfall patterns andalso because of changed ground water regime so on so forth. There is need to address these problems in the implementation of the Project.
The rains have become very fluctuating and erratic in recent years affecting both surface water flow and the ground water regime. Theundergroundwater table is created by the addition of rain water percolated in to the ground and added to the ground water reserve every year. In addition to using the impounded water in surface structures like tanks we will also be drawing water from the ground water table through open wells , bore wells, tube wells etc. for irrigation and conjunctive use. If we are drawing more water than the water added to the ground water reserve everyyear, itresults in over draft of the ground water. Itlowers the water table and makes water scarcer. Thedrawing of water becomes more difficult and costly.
Bore wells have become the bane of Telangana in the domain of irrigation. After the advent of bore well technology, in Telangana the overdraft of ground water has become a perniciousproblem. Countless bore wells have cropped up because of the scarcity of canal irrigation. The hapless digging of bore wells in desperation for irrigation water by the farmers in almostthe entire Telangana area has resulted in heavy over draft of ground water every year.The overdraft and the drastic lowering of water table from thereon is the reason for the large number of failure of bore wells. This has also resulted in the streams and rivulets not flooding or retaining any water in them during rainy season as in the good olden days.
Because of the woefully deeper water table and the bone dry underground a large portion of the rain fall is needed to wet the underground, before making the water run off onthe surface .Therefore in small and moderate rainfall the water does not flow on the surface. The streams and the flood flow canals rarely flow as the rain water percolates rapidly in to unsaturated underground. The run off because of the major rains which are few and far between is not sufficient to fill the tanks. That is the reason why most of our tanks don’t get filled up even in a normal rainfall year.
When there were no bore wells the streams and rivulets in Telangana were over flowing during the rainy season for a few days and there used to be some water in them throughout the rainy season and in some of them even during winter season also. But it is not the situation today. Because of the excessive number of bore wells the very ground water availability and surface flow dynamics of the area is changed. Thepossibility of the surface flow in the streams filling up our tanks is drastically reduced.Much of therain water is going down the drain in to the depleted ground water table. To answer this problem we need to impound the water in medium and major irrigation projects and Lift irrigation schemes which receive water from a vast catchment from upper reaches and from other states also. Huge quantity of water flows in during a limited number of flood days in the rainy season. In addition to irrigating its regular ayacut, these projects during the rainy season can feed these small water bodies with link canals and feeder channels.