“God alone knows what will happen to those of us who have completed paddy transplantation. There’s no water to protect the paddy, which is either in the tillering or stem elongation stage,” rues Gourisetti Nageswara Rao, a farmer from Mulaparru village in Bantumili area of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, as he surveys his 12-acre semi-parched paddy field.
Several farmers like Rao, in villages located at the tail end of the Krishna River irrigation system, including Bantumilli, Koduru, and Hamsaladeevi mandals, have refrained from undertaking sowing operations. The handful who have managed to complete transplantation, are keeping their fingers crossed — no one knows how much water they will get, or if they will even get any.
Rao points out that water is released to select areas on specific days of the week in what is known as vaarabandi (rotation basis). “Farmers close to the sea coast are the worst sufferers as water hardly reaches them under vaarabandi. If this is the case now, we dread to think what will happen if Telangana gets a higher share in Krishna River waters,” he adds.
