Andhra Pradesh - Anantapur   

Stop groundwater exploitation, says Collector

By Our Staff Reporter

ANANTAPUR, AUG. 19. The district Collector, Y.V. Anuradha, has called upon farming community of the district not to exploit the scarce groundwater to prevent recurrence of drought.

Speaking at a farmers' meet on the crisis in groundwater in the district organised here today by the ecology centre of the Rural Development Trust, an NGO, she observed that sinking borewells indiscriminately was one of the main causes of farmers' problems in the district.

Alarming depletion

Not only the groundwater table was depleting alarmingly every year with the farmers' unabated quest for the scarce natural resource, it was also binding them in a debt trap and even leading to the extreme decision of committing suicide. Sinking borewells was not a solution for irrigation, she stated.

She expressed concern that the Government was not in a position to sink borewells even for drinking water need in 58 of the 63 mandals in the district due to alarming depletion of groundwater. If foodgrains or fodder were scarce they could be brought from elsewhere, but if there was water scarcity it could not be met.

Call to farmers

The Collector called upon farmers to prevent rigs entering their villages to sink new borewells. Besides, they should make all efforts to conserve every drop of rainwater, she suggested. "Though we don't have capacity to bring rain we have the ability to conserve rainwater," she asserted. But, everybody should have that social responsibility.

The director of RDT ecology centre, Y.V. Malla Reddy, compared the problem of groundwater in the district to that of sinking ship. "We all would sink if we fail to control the ship," he said. Along with sinking borewells the farmers were also digging themselves deep into a debt trap, he observed.

He suggested fixing a limit on the extent of land to be irrigated under each borewell, cultivating paddy only under canals, implementation of micro irrigation vigorously and taking up the concept of community borewells with four-five beneficiaries for each borewell.

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