Watch: Farmer lifts drain water by hand amid drought in Siddipet

A 61-year-old farmer in Siddipet’s Sheripally village is using a traditional wooden-pole mechanism to lift water from a drain and save his paddy crop. Power cuts, falling groundwater levels and a burnt-out borewell have left farmers struggling.

Siddipet: Necessity is the mother of invention. A farmer in Sheripally village has proved this adage right again by using the age-old method of lifting water bucket by bucket with a counterbalanced wooden pole, known as a shadoof, to irrigate his paddy field. The traditional method appears to have come to his rescue as the ongoing El Nino weather pattern has led to severe drought conditions.

A video of elderly farmer Kurakula Kanakaiah (61), who was seen lifting water from a village drain into his paddy field, went viral on social media on Thursday after some villagers shared it in WhatsApp groups.

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Kanakaiah, who cultivated paddy on his one-and-a-half-acre plot, was finding it difficult to save the crop due to power cuts and depleting groundwater levels. When his borewell pumpset burnt out recently, a part of his field dried up. In a desperate bid to save the remaining crop, Kanakaiah decided to lift water from the drain passing close to his field by building a shadoof-like structure, locally called ‘Gudu’ or ‘yatam’, using a tree.

For the last one week, he has been lifting water from the drain with a bucket. As the drains carry water in full flow during the mornings and evenings, he puts in nearly four hours of effort every day to irrigate his field. The farmer wants to continue lifting water until the crop is ready for harvesting. Until last year, farmers in this village used to receive irrigation water through canals from Kondapochamma Sagar.

However, former sarpanch V Srinivas said the government had failed to lift water from the Godavari to Kondapochamma Sagar. Like Kanakaiah, every farmer in Sheripally had a story to narrate, as portions of their fields had dried up due to a lack of water and power cuts. The farmers said they had no hope of cultivating any crop during the yasangi season under the prevailing circumstances.