The Hindu : Northeast monsoon alone can save crop

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 16, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Northeast monsoon alone can save crop

By S .Vydhianathan

CHENNAI OCT. 15. It is a long way to go for delta farmers as the prospects of the standing samba crop still hinges on the benevolence of the northeast monsoon as the possibility of any water release by Karnataka is ruled out.

Though there were some sharp showers in the delta districts in the last week, helping the PWD authorities to suspend the supply from the Mettur reservoir for two-three days, they were not sufficient, according to officials here. If the current meagre supply of about 6,000 cusecs from the Mettur dam is to be supplemented, there must be heavy showers in the delta districts at regular intervals at least for the next two months. Only then, they said, it would be possible to save the standing crops.

The present release of about 6,000 cusecs could be maintained only for a week, as today's storage was just 12.558 tmcft (94 tmcft), with an inflow of about 5,000 cusecs. Though there were reports of heavy rains in the catchment areas of the river Bhavani, a tributary of the Cauvery, the current storage at the Bhavani reservoir also was not sufficient to come to the rescue of the delta farmers. Today's storage at the reservoir was just 3.3 tmcft as against the total capacity of about 32.8 tmcft. Moreover, ayacutdars of the Bhavani reservoir were also badly in need of water to save their standing crops.

The officials said that at present samba nurseries were raised on about 6,500 hectares in the delta districts, sufficient to transplant in about one lakh hectares. With another 80,000 hectares in tail-end areas covered by direct sowing, about 1.45 lakh hectares had so far been covered under samba in the current season. The coverage is far below the normal area of about 4.5 lakh hectares under normal circumstances. Officials were skeptical of the rest of the farmers going in for the samba in the current season as the present storage was not enough even to save the standing crop.

Already a majority of the delta farmers had lost their kuruvai, popularly known as the cash crop. The cash loss due to the kuruvai failure is estimated at Rs. 2,000 crores. Loss of samba would be yet another blow to the farmers, which now seems unavoidable.

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