Usually there is much hullabaloo about irrigation projects - construction, costs, land acquisition and delays. But, here is one project funded by World Bank that has been successfully completed and farmers have already begun to enjoy the benefits.
The Water Sector Improvement Project Telangana State (WSIPTS),which was taken up in September 2010 to modernise the dilapidated Nagarjunasagar canal network, has officially come to an end in July 2018 after spending ₹2,100 crore. The project aims to benefit around two lakh farmers, providing improved irrigation to an ayacut of 0.26 million hectares in areas of Nalgonda, Suryapet and Khammam.
The project work included deepening, widening and cement-concrete layering of canals along with putting up measuring devices to improve irrigation service delivery, increase agriculture productivity and efficient management of water resources.
Validation
“Only 30% of work was completed before the formation of the State. The pace picked up after the new State came into being and work could be completed in just four years. A third party impact assessment report has validated the execution of work following successful results,” explained Project Director G. Malsur.
Work was done for 90 days each year without declaring any crop holiday during the entire period, and depending on the availability, water was released from the dam.
“It was planned in such a manner that release of water into canals has never hampered rehabilitation work,” Mr. Malsur said.
Repairs were done for 15 main and branch canals, 25 distributary canals, 60 water user association level work slices, five lift irrigation schemes, and complete lining of the Palair channel was taken up with farmers involved in identification of work to avoid any conflict.
Third-party assessment
Independent third party assessment report showed that of the total ayacut of 2.66 lakh hectares in the State under Nagarjunasagar project (NSP), estimated gap ayacut was of about 0.66 lakh hectares. In the last year of project (2017-18), 2.14 lakh hectares was irrigated despite release of just 46.36 TMC of water as against total allocation of 99.75 TMCs.
“It indicated that more than 80% of the area under NSP in the State was irrigated with just 47% of water released. So, we can presume if water is adequately available, the total ayacut could have been irrigated,” said Dr. Malsur, also the VC & MD of TS Mineral Development Corporation.
The study showed increased water efficiency even when inflow was less and improved velocity of water flow due to repairs to canals which also arrested evaporation and seepage losses. All these led to canal conveyance efficiency of 93.78% as against baseline value of 89.78%.
Increased yield
Canal network modernisation led to reduced time for water to reach the fields by 40.98% in Nalgonda and 55.56% in Khammam. Besides, there was a rise in crop yields of five major crops. Against the targeted increase of 15-25%, paddy showed rise of 23.8% yield over the baseline, maize - 50.5%, groundnut - 35.8%, chillies - 16.2%, and cotton - 48.3%.
The farmers got convinced when higher yields of demonstration plots over the non-demonstration plots were shown.
Diversification campaign
A campaign for diversification led to a drop of 17.3% in paddy in Nalgonda district and 33% for cotton, whereas there was huge increase of more than 300% for maize, green gram by 51%, red gram by 77% too in the last three years although drastic fall in price of the red gram affected the crop last year.
Cropping intensity too increased significantly from 130% in baseline to 168% also because of improved groundwater availability. Grand finale in household income had increased by 204.7% from ₹60,296 in baseline to ₹1,83,724 in 2017-18 or 59.1% after taking inflation into account.
An unintended benefit of the project is building of 1,066-km of canal bunds, including eight single-lane bridges, improving transport movement for farmers.