IRRIGATION TANKS AND THEIR TRADITIONAL LOCAL MANAGEMENT: A REMARKABLE ANCIENT HISTORY OF INDIA

سال انتشار: 1386
محل انتشار: سمینار بین المللی تاریخ آبیاری و زهکشی
کد COI اختصاصی: IHSID01_011
زبان مقاله: انگلیسی
تعداد مشاهده: 1901

نویسندگان

Programme Officer, DHAN Foundation, ۱۷, Vellaipillaiyar Kovil Street, S.S.Colony, Madurai-۶۲۵۰۱۶.

Programme Leader, DHAN Foundation, ۱۷, Vellaipillaiyar Kovil Street, S.S.Colony, Madurai-۶۲۵۰۱۶.

چکیده

India, a South Asian tropical country, has historical evidences of its human interventions in the management of water for agriculture from village water bodies. One such intervention is an irrigation tank. A tank is a simple rainwater harvesting structure designed by early settlers using indigenous wisdom and constructed with the generous support of native rulers and chieftains. There exist 500,000 irrigation tanks in the country, of which 150,000 tanks are located in the semi arid region of Deccan plateau. They are located in hydrologically favourable sites, some of them in sequential chains or cascades, effectively capturing the rainfall and serving multiple uses with irrigation having the major share. Tank irrigation systems are simple but fragile structures. They have to be constantly maintained, monitored and conserved. Even more difficult is sharing the scarce water amongst its consumers, particularly farmers. And yet, people across the country have devised a variety of mechanisms to share the water and maintain their tanks. One such mechanism is a community effort, locally known as “kudimaramath” by which the tank is periodically maintained. In a few tanks, the farmers have formed informal organizations on their own, and undertaken water distribution. But the tanks which are in multiuse are presently under the ‘ownership’ purview of State governments. Their management functions also come under the different line departments with neither integral approach nor common purpose. This has resulted in the steady decline of the performance efficiency and degradation of these precious small scale water bodies. DHAN Foundation has therefore chosen to intervene and restore these multipurpose tank systems to their designed standard and revive their local management by the users through community initiatives. This paper resents the efforts taken and the results obtained to benefit the poor whose very livelihood depends on these water bodies.

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