Karimnagar: Amid water shortage, farmers dig pits in canal to draw groundwater

Farmers from Gangadhara, Ramadugu, Mallial, Boinpalli mandals of Choppadandi and other areas are among those who are arranging excavators to dig the pits.

Karimnagar: With a severe shortage of water for their crops continuing with no sign of help from the official machinery, farmers in the district, who sowed crops alongside the flood flow canal of the Sriram Sagar Project, are now digging pits in the canal itself to extract groundwater. They are then arranging motors to take the water to their fields.

Farmers from Gangadhara, Ramadugu, Mallial, Boinpalli mandals of Choppadandi and other areas are among those who are arranging excavators to dig the pits. Though different crops such as paddy, maize and others were sowed, a major portion of the area is covered with paddy. Since the crop is in its crucial and final stage, it needs sufficient water to get a good yield. So the farmers are leaving no stone unturned to supply water to the crop and are digging pits, mostly upto 30 feet depth and about 15 m wide in the canal.

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It takes five hours to dig such pits, with the excavator owners charging Rs.2,000 per hour. To share the expenses, four to five farmers are forming a group and engaging the excavators.

The flood flow canal is actually meant to carry surplus water from the SRSP project during floods to the Mid Manair Dam. Though there is no system to supply water to agricultural fields through distributaries, farmers draw water from the canal by arranging motors. En route, thousands of acres have been cultivated on either sides of the canal in Nizamabad, Jagtial, Karimnagar and Rajanna-Sircilla districts.

For the first time in the last seven to eight years, there was no water supply into the canal. Moreover, agricultural wells as well as borewells dried up following the depletion of the groundwater table drastically, leading to a major agrarian crisis, the kind of those that Telangana has not seen for quite a long time. Speaking to Telangana Today, a farmer from Kurmapalle of Ramadugu mandal, Chimalla Pochaiaha said that every year, they used to draw water from the canal and sow crops. However, there was no water in the canal this year. To overcome this problem, they were digging pits in the canal to extract water by arranging motors. If a pit was dug, they were able to draw water for five days. After five days, they have to dig another pit a little away, he said.