O Paneerselvam's first challenge as chief minister: Tamil Nadu's water crisis

Paddy farmers are wringing their hands in distress in Tuticorin district of Tamil Nadu. The skies have not opened up. “Come and see our Kadamba lake,” says K Boopathi, a 60-year-old farmer, who owns 10 acres in Kurumbur. Boopathi usually cultivates banana on six acres and paddy in the other four.
But there is no lake in Kurumbur this year. The Kadamba, along with 52 other lakes and tanks in Tuticorin, has dried up. All of these, put together, irrigate over 22,000 hectares (ha) of paddy in the district. Until December, no farmer had planted the saplings, a month when they would normally be fertilising the crop.

“There is no rain and no water in the Tamirabarani river,” says Boopathi. “We have time until December 20. If the rains set in by then, we may think of cultivating paddy. Otherwise we will have to go in for ulundhu (black gram) or vegetables.”

Boopathi has invested Rs 3.5 lakh and is resigned to the fact that he is probably going to lose it. His friend Tamil Mani, another farmer in Kurumbur, says the paddy farmers in the region don’t know what to do next. “Muzhichikittu irukkom (we are blinking),” says Mani.

“We have bought saplings but cannot plant them. Some 8,000 acres of farmland here depend on the Kadamba lake for irrigation. What do we do?”

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The rain gods have not been kind to Tamil Nadu. After the deluge of 2015, when Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and other districts of the state were flooded, drought looms large a year later. The Papanasam dam, which brings water from the Tamirabarani river to lakes like Kadamba, has been shut since early October. Water is being released only for drinking needs as storage levels are at a meagre 6.5% of the dam’s 5,500 mcft capacity.

There is no water available for irrigation. About 600 km away from the coastal district of Tuticorin, farmer Lakshmi Ramakrishnan, 27, sits idle in the cool morning air of the Javvadhu Hills in Tiruvannamalai district in the northern part of the state. She too looks skyward. Her four acres of land, normally cultivated with paddy, lies dry now and cows graze the weeds springing up.

“Normally we cultivate paddy and eat the rice ourselves,” she says. “This year we are eating the free ration (PDS) rice given by the government. No one likes it at home.”

Ramakrishnan tried to cultivate ragi, a crop that grows even in dry climes. That crop withered away and died. She wants to try the kanakambaram flower next but is unable to get the seeds. “Without rain, life here cannot go on,” she says. “There is a well in our village but barely enough water. If we dig a new borewell here up in the hills, we find water only at 300-350 feet. We don’t know what to do.”

Floods To drought
This, precisely, is the first big challenge that the new CM, O Panneerselvam, has to tackle, following the demise of party supremo J Jayalalithaa on November 5. Water — or rather the lack of it.

With the state battling Karnataka on the one hand for the Cauvery water and a Northeast monsoon that is 90% deficit so far, on the other, OPS, for the first time, will have to take decisions on his own. Farmers are in distress and the state leadership, hamstrung by power struggles within the party post Jayalalithaa, is yet to respond.

R Gopalakrishnan, a farmer in Srivaikundam, Tuticorin, relies on water from the nearby Kasbah lake to irrigate his paddy fields of over 2 acres as well as an equal acreage of banana crop. Today, Gopalakrishnan has notched up loans from banks and local moneylenders to the tune of Rs 3 lakh and has no way to repay them, having mortgaged all his utensils, wife’s jewellery and some property as well. “In 2015, the prices of banana were at rock bottom.

The man who bought bananas from us committed suicide as he could not pay us the promised rate. Now, this year, again there is no rain,” he says.

Gopalakrishnan’s neighbour Kandha Siva Subbu says that every farmer in these parts has to have an alternative occupation in order to survive. “I run the local cable TV network here,” says Subbu. “But now things are so bad that people are unable to pay.”

Water resources expert Nainar Kulasekaran says that 80,000 acres of farmland in Tirunelveli and Tuticorin have been affected, meaning a deficit in produce of 7 lakh quintals of rice during the Pisaanam season, cultivated between October and March. “53 tanks in this area have not been desilted for over a century now,” says Kulasekaran. “Together they have a total capacity of 2,774 mcft capacity. Now there is not even 1,000 mcft storage due to siltation. Government needs to desilt these immediately. Encroachments of lakes and tanks must be removed,” he says.

The district administration of Tirunelveli, in November, desilted the Karuppanadhi dam for the first time since it was built. Around 8 ft of silt was removed from the 148 ft high dam. “We still hope that some rains will come,” says district collector of Tirunelveli, M Karunagaran. “Anyhow, to save farmers from the vagaries of the monsoon, we have directed officials to cover all farmers under crop insurance. We have instructed all municipalities, panchayats and town panchayats to make alternative sources of drinking water supply ready. We can manage with drinking water up to February 2017.”

Farmers, though, are seething. They are staring at a loss of livelihood and a distinct possibility of hunger. The state is in for a harsh summer, if the heavens do not open up soon.

The writer is an independent Chennai-based journalist with The Lede