Prof M S Swaminathan, the nonagenarian agricultural scientist who played the crucial role in the Green Revolution of the 1960s has come out with a home-made simple but effective solution to address the water crisis faced by Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu. A mission to convert water-deficient areas in Villupuram into water-surplus areas has been launched on Tuesday by the Chennai based M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and Wabag ltd, a water technology company in Germany .
The initiative comes at a time when Tamil Nadu faces severe water shortage on account of the failure of the north east monsoon of 2016 to 2017 and the delay in implementing irrigation schemes announced by the State Government.
Swaminathan (92) said that the new mission is based on effective ground water management. "In 2015, the MSSRF and Wabag joined hands for the first time to facilitate rejuvenation of wells in Villupuram district for farming in 160 acres of land. While water requirements for farming in Villupuram region was met from open wells, we found that more than 60 per cent of the wells were degraded. Based on the technical input provided by the MSSRF, the German company renovated the wells with their expertise," said Prof Swaminathan.
The 2015 joint venture between MSSRF and Wabag succeeded in increasing the land area under cultivation and enhanced production of crops. "This also led to the formation of a revolving fund for farmers for additional support," said V selvam, executive director, MSSRF.
With Tuesday's signing of the MoU between the two institutions, Wabag would bring in Rs 62 lakh which will be used for micro-irrigation technologies and to rejuvenate the unused wells in the region." An expected output is to bring increased land under cultivation of pulses and oilseeds with micro irrigation systems and rejuvenation of open wells with appropriate ground water recharge technologies," said Selvam.
S Varadarajan, director, Wabag, said the objective was to improve agricultural output with efficient water usage processes and make fallow lands productive. "Agriculture consumes 75 per cent of water while its contribution to our GDP is 15 per cent. Our mission is to bring down the stress level caused by water consumption," said Varadarajan.