Crackdown on tank bed encroachers

By S. K. Ramoo

BANGALORE, MAY 1. The Government, particularly the Minor Irrigation Department, over the years has sadly turned a blind eye to the phenomenon of unauthorised encroachment and cultivation of tank beds in almost all taluks.

As a consequence, the tank beds are often put to illegal construction activities such as housing and even used for unauthorised cultivation. This is going on in collusion with revenue authorities.

Tanks serve as precious water bodies to cater to the needs of irrigation and drinking water purposes. They are often wantonly breached to grab their beds for unauthorised encroachments. At long last, the department of Minor Irrigation has woken up to this phenomenon and appears to have resolved to get tank beds vacated from illegal occupation. It has plans to prepare comprehensive maps of all irrigation tanks in the State and proposes to obtain full data on them by means of satellite imagery with technical assistance of the National Remote Sensing Organisation.

It is dismaying to note that several studies have forewarned that a majority of tanks and lakes are in danger of becoming extinct as they are filled with silt upto 30 per cent of their storage capacities. One of its consequences is that the tail-end atchkatdars are being denied their due share of water for irrigation. Karnataka is one of the very few States which have launched desilting of tanks by employing heavy machinery and with the active participation of the local farmers. It has been successfully tried out on a pilot project basis. The response to ``tanks clean-up'' operations has been overwhelming from both the local political leadership and the farming community. The farmers are the main beneficiaries as they are permitted to transport beneficial silty soil to be used in their fields. Following the clean-up, several tanks have regained their original storage capacities.

This mode of desilting tanks is found to be economical and cost- effective. The department has formulated guidelines for desilting irrigation tanks with the participation of local farmers. It has formulated a tank clean-up project by fixing a target of desilting about 5,000 tanks in the next five years. In this regard, a Rs. 1,000-crore project proposal is formulated to seek the World Bank assistance. With this massive project in view, the Chief Minister, Mr. S. M. Krishna, announced in his recent budget speech that the Government proposed to augment water storage capacities of 25,000 irrigation tanks in the next five years if the World Bank loan materialised. The project has been given a grandiose name, ``Jalasamvardhana.''

As part of the endeavour to computerise all departments, a beginning has already been made in the Minor Irrigation Department, following installation of computers in the offices of the Secretary and Chief Engineers. It has drawn up an ambitious plan to computerise all offices from the sub-divisional level. A Website, dedicated to goals and achievements of the department, will shortly be put in place for providing information and data, which can be accessed by the public. The department is contemplating to earmark one per cent of the estimated cost of each project for concurrent evaluation of their progress to be undertaken by reputed organisations such as the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. It is also toying with the idea of going in for ``photo auditing'' of on- going projects to keep track of their progress by procuring photographs from inception to their completion.

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