NIZAMABAD: While many of the districts in the state are reeling under heavy rains and floods, Nizamabad district seems to be facing a peculiar problem of water scarcity. The worst hit are the paddy farmers.
Agriculture department officials said paddy sowing has not crossed even 50 per cent of the target though the season would end on August 15. Confirming the worst fears, a farmer A Subbaiah of Varni mandal told TOI that the ryots were scared to cultivate paddy due to shortage of water.
"Only some farmers who have sufficient water in their borewells are opting for paddy," Subbaiah said. He further said a majority of the ryots were shifting towards irrigated dry (ID) crops like maize, jowar, soyabean and pulses.
While almost all projects in Telangana region received copious inflows following incessant rains, the water level in the district irrigation projects has hit dead storage level. "Except Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP), no other project has received water inflows," an irrigation official said.
Sources said paddy was sown only in 45,512 hectares as against 94,267 hectares of normal command area for the kharif season. Maize crop has almost reached the target with a sown area of 48,436 ha as against the target of 54,086 ha. Other crops like green gram (20,597 ha), black gram (16,149 ha), red gram (7,471 ha), soyabean (66,676 ha), cotton (17,746 ha) and turmeric (13,149 ha) have all crossed the targeted normal area cultivation.
Joint director, agriculture, Gulam Mohammed Samdani told TOI that farmers were using borewell water to cultivate paddy in the district. "Only a few farmers who were not interested in shifting their crop pattern had gone in for paddy," he said.
A ryot S Venkateshwar Rao of Renjal mandal said he used to cultivate paddy in the entire stretch of 10 acres when water from Nizamsagar project was available. "But now, I cannot cultivate paddy because of construction of Singur project in the upper reaches of Nizamsagar project," he bemoaned.
In view of taking Manjeera water to Hyderabad for drinking purposes, Singur balancing reservoir was built in Medak district. "Since the reservoir came into being, inflows into Nizamsagar have dwindled. The farmers are hit badly because of this," an irrigation expert said.
Water level in the Nizamasagar project is almost at dead storage. While it has 17.8 tmc storage capacity, only 760.74 mcft (not even 1 tmc) water is available. While 15.907 tmc of water is available in Singur as against its storage capacity of 30 tmc, all other small and medium projects like Pocharam, Koulasnala, Ramadugu, Singeetham and Kalyani are down in the dumps with the water level hitting rock-bottom.
Source: TOI 10 Aug 2010
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