Irrigation

Strong El Nino, less rainfall this year: IMD

"We did everything ourselves", said the ebuillent Bhuvaneshwari Devi. "We took the cement up, carried the sand, everything! And we even told them where to place the tank"! She went on to narrate how the women's group of which she is a member, taught the men of the village that siting a tank in the stream will place it in danger of being washed away.

I remember a farm pond that I once visited in Maharashtra. It shone like a square sapphire in that dry land, securely held by tall earth embankments. On the other side of one of those embankments was a parched and dying field. When I asked the farmer why it wasn't irrigated, he asked me to give him a pump.

1999 was an interesting real estate year for Mehdiganj village in Uttar Pradesh. Someone began buying up land adjoining a soft drink factory owned by the Parle Company. They also began buying land from the farmers except the farmers had no idea as to whom they were selling the land to. As the boundary wall rose up, problems arose too.

Water and agriculture are closely linked in our country where 60% our net sown area is rain-fed. Indian agriculture is undoubtedly dependent on the monsoon where good rains have meant enhanced agricultural production, and a weak or bad monsoon has lowered production thereby impacting the economy.

About the workshop:

10% of Odisha coast prone to erosion: Study

Tawa reservoir in Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh, irrigates several thousand hectares of land. It is here that Sunil Gupta, popularly known as Sunil Bhai, rose to prominence in 1995 when he led the struggle of the tribals displaced by the reservoir.

NGT prohibits groundwater extraction in Maharashtra's 12 districts

Many great civilisations have thrived near rivers with people moving in search of water across swathes of lands. The same holds true for present day Punjab, especially its farmers.