244-Impact of Tank Rehabilitation for Direct and Indirect Users—A Case Study in Vengal Tank, Tamil Nadu .

Abstract

Tank irrigation is an old established practice in most of the semi-arid tropical parts of India. Since the monsoon rainfall pours erratically in this region. Irrigation tanks serves to store and regulate the flow of water for agricultural use. In southern part of India, they are primarily used for the production of rice. Since major and medium irrigation projects needs huge investment, cost, long gestation period, heavy maintenance cost and ecological problem. There is a need to utilize the existing tanks by undertaking necessary repairs to them and evolving proper management system. This will facilitate the optimum utilization of the available rain water for sustainable agriculture development in semi-arid tracks of the country. Several factors such as increase in urbanization, encroachments, changes in land ownership pattern, absentee landlordism, development of well irrigation in tank command area, changes in cropping pattern in favor of cash crop and occupational diversification from agricultural to non-agricultural activities leads to improper maintenance of tanks causes many of the tanks dysfunctional. Later it was realized to rehabilitate the existing tank system and maintain them properly to obtain continued benefits from them than allowing them to degenerate and create new sources at exorbitantly high cost. In the initial years of tank rehabilitation the focus was to maximize the agricultural production per unit of water supplied to the farmers but later the main emphasis has been shifted towards the livelihood approaches through community based tank rehabilitation with involvement of multi-stake holders which includes small, marginal farmers, landless group, women and other vulnerable groups. The present study attempts to explain the impact of tank rehabilitation exclusively in pen-urban areas with the special objective of to understand the impact of water productivity and the livelihood options for direct and indirect uses before and after tank rehabilitation. The present study attempts to explain the impact of tanks rehabilitation exclusively in pen-urban areas with the specific objective: • To understand both the direct and indirect impact of productivity of water and the livelihood options after rehabilitation of tanks. As to understand the above a total of 10 per cent respondents (irrespective of their land ownership) were selected from Vengal village in Tamil Nadu State of India and the extent of use of tank was studied. The samples were analyzed and the results abstracted were highly responsive interims of a rise in internal rate of net return, yield increases/acre, increase in yield due to silt application, incremental net return per hectare, increase in yield of dug and dug cum bore wells, increase in yield of bore wells, net yield/ ha and enhanced livelihood options by and large.