Tamil Nadu   

Trust grows as farmers interact

By S. Ganesan

TIRUCHI, JUNE 12. Acrimony seemed to have given way to camaraderie as farmers of the Cauvery delta in Tiruchi district played host to a delegation of farmers' representatives from Karnataka, which undertook a field visit of the basin areas here today.

Accompanied by their Tamil Nadu counterparts, the Karnataka farmers visited Mukkombu, a barrage upstream of the Grand Anaicut, and interacted with banana growers of the Thottiyam belt before proceeding to Erode district and the Mettur reservoir.

The visit was part of the `Cauvery Family' initiative, taken up at the instance of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, to promote better understanding between farmers' representatives of the two major riparian States. This was the second field visit undertaken by the Karnataka team in the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu. A delegation from Tamil Nadu made a similar visit to the Karnataka delta areas previously.

At Mukkombu, the Karnataka farmers got a firsthand account of the ground situation in the delta areas of the district, symbolised by the dry Cauvery riverbed. Later, they proceeded upstream via Kulithalai and Thottiyam, where the team was given a warm reception by banana growers.

In a brief interaction with the farmers at Thottiyam, K.C. Basavaraj, vice-president, Karnataka State Farmers Association, and leader of the delegation, acknowledged that the Cauvery Family meetings and the mutual field visits contributed to clearing misconceptions among farmers of the two States. Though there were some critical and acrimonious exchanges at the initial meetings, mutual suspicions melted away, giving place to friendship and trust. The farmers' representatives were able to appreciate each other's problems better and realise that they were part of the same family, he said.

Echoing his sentiments, the coordinator of the `Cauvery Family,' S. Janakarajan, said the interaction helped to bring about a spirit of give and take among the Cauvery Family members. For the first time, the family members now agreed to work on evolving a distress-sharing formula. Importantly, the Karnataka farmers now realised that their counterparts in Tamil Nadu were not raising three crops in a year — a popular misconception.

The president of the Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association, S. Ranganathan, underlined the need for the Cauvery Family to grow and gain in strength, so that the vexed dispute could be resolved at the earliest.

The Karnataka delegation included the Advisor of the World Bank and former Irrigation Secretary to the Union Government, Bhavani Shankar.

A host of representatives of various farmers' associations of Tamil Nadu, assisted by the former Superintending Engineer, Public Works department, Natarajan, accompanied the team.

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