Groundwater Use for Farming Peaks in Telangana

Hyderabad: More ground water is being extracted in Telangana than ever before by farmers, belying the claims of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao that the BRS government had increased irrigation potential in the state. This, despite announcements that the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme’s (KLIS) network of storage reservoirs and canal systems – some existing that were dovetailed into the projcet, and some new – alone contributing to irrigating some 18.25 lakh acres of agricultural land.

According to reports specific to Telangana that were prepared by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), groundwater extraction for agriculture rose from 235 tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet) in 2019-20 to 256 tmc ft in 2022, indicating that the state’s farmers were increasingly relying on ground water to irrigate their crops in many of the 33 districts.

The number of agriculture borewells rose from around 19 lakh in 2014, the year Telangana was formed, to 26.97 lakh in 2022 demonstrating that farmers rely more on groundwater extraction to irrigate their crops. While part of this surge in agricultural borewells was the promise of 24-hour free power supply, those who study agriculture say farmers continue to rely on borewells because the government failed to keep its promise of providing irrigation to what it claimed as “more than one crore acres” each year.

Of this claim, KLIS was to irrigate 18,25,700 acres in 13 districts, but farmers in these 13 districts have 13,32,678 agricultural borewells, as per the latest state government data. These borewells represent nearly half of all agricultural energized pumpsets in the state.

Based on the generally accepted average of 3 acres being irrigated by one agricultural borewell, in these KLIS ‘served’ districts, farmers rely on ground water to irrigate 39,98,034 acres a year together in the two main crop seasons.

Data indicates that just in 2022 alone, farmers in these 13 districts pumped out a 122 tmc ft of water. To put that into perspective, the massive Srisailam reservoir on Krishna river, when at full capacity, holds 216 tmc ft of water.

In respect to the overall groundwater extraction in districts that comprise now Telangana, the extraction stood at 274 tmc ft in 2013, a year before the state was formed, rose dramatically to 282 tmc ft in 2022. Agricultural use of ground water comprises a lion’s share of the extraction for these years.

While actual estimates of just how many acres are brought under the plough in Telangana each year vary, the generally accepted figure is around 1.30 crore acres – for the Vanakalam (Kharif), and Yasangi (Rabi) crop seasons put together. Incidentally, if one goes by farm land extent based on Rythu Bandhu data, the government is paying for around 1.5 lakh acres a year (for both seasons).

On an average, Telangana’s farmers pump out some 8,000 litres of groundwater every hour per hour per eat pumpset, a senior academic expert in agriculture and water use in the state told Deccan Chronicle. “Suddenly, groundwater for agriculture has become a political issue instead of an agriculture issue. The real problem is about how this water is being used. All estimates and field level findings point to a lot of wastage of ground water in farming that ranges from 10 percent to 20 percent,” the expert said.