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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Maharashtra Farm Ponds: accelerating groundwater exploitation, rather than harvesting rain? -Amruta Pradhan

Maharashtra Farm Ponds: accelerating groundwater exploitation, rather than harvesting rain? -Amruta Pradhan

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published Published on Mar 4, 2017   modified Modified on Mar 4, 2017
-South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP)

Farm ponds dotting the agricultural fields immediately grab your attention as you enter Hiwargaon Pawasa – a small village of about 1500 population in Sangamner Taluka of Ahmadnagar District. The village is located just off NH-50, the national highway connecting Pune and Nashik. Farm ponds start to appear as soon as you turn east from NH-50 (which broadly runs North South) to head towards Hiwargaon. Nearly every farm, small or big, has a plastic lined farm pond. Hiwargaon Pawasa village alone has some 300 odd farm ponds.

I am here to see how these small scale irrigation facilities now set to be implemented on massive scale through the country are performing on ground.

Farm ponds recognized as a drought proofing measure have received a great push from the central government recently. Target of 5 lakh farm ponds from MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) funds was announced in the Budget for 2016-17. And it is anticipated that against this target, about 10 lakh farm ponds would be completed by March 2017. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech announced that during 2017-18, another 5 lakh farm ponds will be taken up. “This single measure will contribute greatly to drought proofing of gram panchayats.” he said in his speech.

As Ravish Kumar rightly pointed out in his show on NDTV[i], if these numbers are to be believed, this is a revolution in making. On the flip side however serious concerns are being raised over implementation of the farm ponds and more importantly –their use. Civil society organizations like Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR) and also SANDRP have been pointing out that the use of farm ponds has long drifted from its objective of storing rainwater for protective irrigation. Most of the farm ponds are instead being used as storage tanks for pumped out groundwater exposing this underground resource to losses through evaporation, etc. In the process they are accelerating the rate of groundwater exploitation multifold.

Farm ponds of Hiwargaon Pawasa aiding indiscriminate groundwater extraction

The main reason for introduction of farm pond scheme was to collect rainwater, which would otherwise have flowed out of the field. According to the guidelines issued under NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) as well as RKVY (Rastriya Krushi Vikas Yojana) a typical farm pond should have an inlet for water to collect from surface run off from higher reaches or to receive pumped water and an outlet for overflow of water.

None of the farm ponds in Hiwargaon however have inlet and outlets or any other arrangement for excess rainwater inflow as was envisioned in the scheme. In Hiwargaon instead of digging the ponds in a low lying area many of them are dug on the highest points of the farms in order to supply water by gravity.

The ponds in Hiwargaon receive water from two sources. One is of course borewells and dug wells and the other is Pravara River (tributary of Godavari) which flows at a distance of 4 km north from the village. About 75 to 80% of the ponds are dependent on groundwater. Varying sizes of the ponds can be seen through villages from small ones of size 14mx17mx3m to big ones of size 30.5mx30.5mx4.5m which are lined with 500 micron plastic sheets. Till January ponds are refilled as and when they empty. After January typically the river and the wells go dry. Before that the pond is filled and that water is used till monsoon. Usually crops are given water once in 1.5 months in this period.

Please click here to read more.

South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), 2 March, 2017, https://sandrp.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/maharashtra-farm-ponds-accelerating-groundwater-exploitation-rather-than-harvesting-rain/


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