The Hindu : Quarrying may worsen plight of delta tail-end ryots

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 02, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Quarrying may worsen plight of delta tail-end ryots

By V. Venkatasubramanian

Nagapattinam May 1. Farmers in Nagapattinam and Karaikal apprehend that indiscriminate sand mining in the upper reaches of the Cauvery will make things worse for agricultural operations.

As the fate of farming in tail-end areas is decided by the quantum of water released from the Mettur reservoir, unchecked quarrying will rob them of a chance of getting `sufficient' water for irrigation in the days to come, say the farmers.

Pointing out that of late it has taken nearly a fortnight for water to reach the tail-end areas, they fear that this duration may extend further by another 10 or 15 days as normal flow can be ensured only after the craters formed in the riverbed are filled.

The farmers, who witnessed crops withering for lack of sufficient flow of water and owing to monsoon failure in the recent past, pointed out that 9000 cusecs released from the Mettur dam during the fag-end of the last samba season did not reach even Thanjavur.

Recalling the `golden days' of the delta, K. G. Krishnamurthy, vice-president, Thanjavur District Farmers Welfare Association, said it would take only five-seven days for water to reach tail-end areas.

But in the last four or five years, the duration had stretched to 15 days.

Under the circumstances, only if 30,000 cusecs or more was discharged from the Mettur dam would water reach tail-end areas within a fortnight, he said.

Expressing a similar view, Arupathi Kalyanam, secretary, Federation of Farmers Associations in Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam, said if the government allowed illegal and indiscriminate quarrying any further, the chances of water being conveyed to the delta districts from the Mettur dam, which even otherwise had a very poor storage now, would become bleak.

Consequently, the plight of the farmers who already suffered a big setback in the last four seasons, would worsen.

Claiming that laxity on the part of Tamil Nadu Government in checking the indiscriminate sand mining would have a direct impact on irrigation and drinking water needs of Karaikal also, S. P. Selvashanmugam, president, Cauvery Delta Farmers Legal Action Committee, Karaikal, said deepening of the Cauvery in the name of quarrying would hamper the natural flow into tributaries of the river and `A' class channels.

Karaikal farmers were already denied their rightful share of 6 tmcft of water every agriculture season, and the situation would become worse if the Tamil Nadu Government failed to check this menace as farmers in the Union Territory area were solely dependent on the flows in the tributaries `A' class channels, he said.

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