NaMo, you have achieved Swarajyam 2014. Now, achieve 24x7 water for every farm, every home in 6.2 lakh villages of Bharatam.
Benefits
Immediate employment for the next 3 years to a million people.
Assured irrigated water to every farm and assured drinking water to every home.
Mitigate floods in Assam and drought in many parts of Bharat.
Create 9 crore acres of additional wet land. Distribute this to 9 crore landless families to benefit 45 crore Bharatam Janam as owners of land one acre per family.
Increase cultivation upto 3 crops per year. Treble present agri production from 200 m. tonnes to 600 m. tonnes. Bharatam can feed the world, thanks to Himalayan waters and alluvial soil.
This will be revolution, NaMo, for which your team will be remembered for generations to come. Hon'ble SC in their historic judgement of 2012 (CJ Kapadia) have already given the road map for implementation.
Do it, NaMo, announce National Water Grid Authority with the msision 24x7 water for every farm, every home in 6.2 lakh villages.
Be the instrument of abhyudayam revolution for Bharatam Janam. With 24x7 water in very village, swaccha bharat is assured for generations to come.
Make this your resolution on this day, your birthday, NaMo.
Just the two months' flood waters of Brahmaputra will double the water availability in every river of Bharatam south of the Vindhyas. This will be water revolution, Blue Revolution for Bharatam Janam.
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Centre
Sahyadri contour canal paralleling Konkan RailwayFor the past 10 years Todkar has been explaining his `watering Maharashtra scheme' to engineers, bureaucrats, politicians, and agricultural experts at all levels. Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and water expert Vijay Anna Borade, among others, have appreciated the scheme. Irrigation Minister Ajit Ghorpade was so impressed that he went to Nagpur this January with Todkar to check the technical feasibility of the concept with the help of remote sensing and GIS (geographical information systems). "Technically, it is an excellent idea. The financial aspects of the project are under scrutiny. The government is seriously considering it," said Ghorpade.
``I am convinced that this scheme would benefit the entire State. But top-level engineers seem hesitant to accept an idea coming from the junior level. So they initially ignored it, later they questioned the feasibility of the initiative. They hiked the project cost by eight to 10 times to prove that it was financially non-viable. The tendency here is to prefer billion-dollar projects, even if they cannot be completed, to low-cost and implementable ones,'' regrets former Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. He suggested working out a small demonstration project.
A simple water conservation scheme that Todkar designed and proposed involves a 5-km-long canal on natural contour near Latur. When one kilometre of the canal's entire length was built at a cost of Rs.1.2 million, it helped conserve 60,000 cubic metres of water last year and irrigate 100 ha of drought-prone areas (as opposed to Rs.10 million to build percolation tanks to irrigate 100 ha). Enthusiastic people were rushing to see this novel type of dam, which raised the water level of wells and tanks in the area.
Agricultural scientist Prof. B.K. Dhonde, a national award winner for contour marker, who has trained forest officers in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, says: "Natural contour is the ideal method for river linking. Cement and steel consumption would be minimal. The Krishna and Godavari basin development projects have reached a standstill for want of huge financial resources. Small and yet very attractive contour canal is a fantastic alternative. It should be used everywhere in the country to collect water from hilly terrain - especially water going to the sea on the west coast can be diverted to southern India which is facing a severe water crisis."
Ghorpade has announced that the State government would arrange a scheme to divert excess water from the Konkan to the rest of the State. The ground reality is that four years of drought in the State has made people furious. They will feel good only when they become water-secure.
A serious debate on this method of rainwater harvesting at the national level is the need of the hour.
Godavari travels 174 km to kiss Krishna, hope floats
Priests perform puja at ferri near Vijayawada where the Godavari's water, flowing from the neighbouring West Godavari district, was linked to river Krishna. (TOI photo by Suman Reddy)
HYDERABAD: With the formal launch of the Pattiseema lift irrigation scheme in Andhra Pradesh, India on Wednesday took a step forward in its ambitious but long-pending goal to interlink major rivers to form a national water grid. The Pattiseema project lifts flood water from the river Godavari and pumps it into the Polavaram right canal that empties into the river Krishna in Vijayawada.
The interlinking of the Godavari and the Krishna has been on the anvil for almost five decades and with the commissioning of the Pattiseema scheme, four major rivers in Andhra Pradesh are now connected to one another: Godavari-Krishna, Krishna-Pennar and Pennar-Tungabhadra.
READ ALSO: How Andhra CM linked rivers, delinked netas
Thousands of farmers in Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur and Chittoor districts will benefit from the Godavari-Krishna linkage. About 17 lakh acres including 13 lakhs in the Krishna delta will get assured irrigation water for two agricultural crops round the year. Thousands of villages en route will get drinking water supplies.
The Pattiseema (Polavaram) is one of the major projects envisaged under the national river linking project that aims to connect as many as 30 rivers including the Himalayan and the peninsular. Incidentally, Andhra Pradesh has become the only state with four of these rivers interconnected. The next in the pipeline under the national project is the interlinking of Ken (Madhya Pradesh) and Betwa (Uttar Pradesh) rivers. Though Ken-Betwa was touted to be the first river interlink project under the revised national scheme, AP chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu hurried through the Pattiseema scheme and completed it in record eight months.
READ ALSO: Emotional Naidu flags off 'pavitra sangam'
The Pattiseema is nothing more than the Polavaram-Vijayawada canal project under the Polavaram dam. But since the Polavaram dam is yet to be taken up, Naidu redesigned the scheme to pump the Godavari water into the already completed Polavaram canal to carry it to the Krishna river 174 km away. The Polavaram dam has been a bone of contention between AP and Telangana on one hand and AP and Odisha on the other. The Centre has declared Polavaram as a national project, but kept it pending due to objections from AP's neighbours. Once completed, the Polavaram will benefit farmers in East Godavari and Visakhapatnam districts too.
Interestingly, the national river interlink project was first conceived about two centuries ago by British engineer Sir Arthur Cotton, who designed the anicuts across the Godavari at Dhowlaiswaram and the Krishna in Vijayawada. The idea was revived by eminent engineer-politician Dr KL Rao about five decades ago. The Polavaram-Vijayawada link was proposed by Dr Rao. Later, TDP founder-president and former chief minister NT Rama Rao and former chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy too played a key role in the project in Andhra Pradesh.
The interlinking of the Godavari and the Krishna has been on the anvil for almost five decades and with the commissioning of the Pattiseema scheme, four major rivers in Andhra Pradesh are now connected to one another: Godavari-Krishna, Krishna-Pennar and Pennar-Tungabhadra.
READ ALSO: How Andhra CM linked rivers, delinked netas
Thousands of farmers in Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur and Chittoor districts will benefit from the Godavari-Krishna linkage. About 17 lakh acres including 13 lakhs in the Krishna delta will get assured irrigation water for two agricultural crops round the year. Thousands of villages en route will get drinking water supplies.
The Pattiseema (Polavaram) is one of the major projects envisaged under the national river linking project that aims to connect as many as 30 rivers including the Himalayan and the peninsular. Incidentally, Andhra Pradesh has become the only state with four of these rivers interconnected. The next in the pipeline under the national project is the interlinking of Ken (Madhya Pradesh) and Betwa (Uttar Pradesh) rivers. Though Ken-Betwa was touted to be the first river interlink project under the revised national scheme, AP chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu hurried through the Pattiseema scheme and completed it in record eight months.
READ ALSO: Emotional Naidu flags off 'pavitra sangam'
The Pattiseema is nothing more than the Polavaram-Vijayawada canal project under the Polavaram dam. But since the Polavaram dam is yet to be taken up, Naidu redesigned the scheme to pump the Godavari water into the already completed Polavaram canal to carry it to the Krishna river 174 km away. The Polavaram dam has been a bone of contention between AP and Telangana on one hand and AP and Odisha on the other. The Centre has declared Polavaram as a national project, but kept it pending due to objections from AP's neighbours. Once completed, the Polavaram will benefit farmers in East Godavari and Visakhapatnam districts too.
Interestingly, the national river interlink project was first conceived about two centuries ago by British engineer Sir Arthur Cotton, who designed the anicuts across the Godavari at Dhowlaiswaram and the Krishna in Vijayawada. The idea was revived by eminent engineer-politician Dr KL Rao about five decades ago. The Polavaram-Vijayawada link was proposed by Dr Rao. Later, TDP founder-president and former chief minister NT Rama Rao and former chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy too played a key role in the project in Andhra Pradesh.