Telangana’s drought warning signs ignored, farmers pay the price

HYDERABAD: A worsening water crisis in Telangana has brought the state government’s drought preparedness under scrutiny, with a deficient monsoon, falling reservoir levels and stressed groundwater resources threatening farmers. The state Telangana is heading into a difficult agricultural season. Due to prevailing El-Nino situation, with less rain after the southwest monsoon and reservoir stocks falling sharply, farmers are increasingly being forced to depend on water tankers to save standing crops. The failure of the state government to tackle the situation also added fuel to the crisis.

The state government is now making efforts to draw emergency measures, but the main question is why a comprehensive response was not put in place earlier, despite warnings from its own Agriculture Department about inadequate rainfall and dwindling irrigation reserves.

The state’s official irrigation dashboard recorded cumulative rainfall of 596.86 mm against the normal 845.71 mm, a deficit of 29.42 per cent as of October 22. The figures point to a substantial shortfall in water availability at a time when agricultural activity is increasingly dependent on groundwater and supplementary irrigation.

Warnings came before the crisis

The Agriculture Department’s Kharif contingency plan, released in July, had warned that below-normal rainfall and poor inflows into the Krishna and Godavari basins could sharply restrict irrigation releases. At the time, utilisable storage was estimated at 27.69 TMC in the Godavari basin and 14.81 TMC in the Krishna basin. Farmers were advised to consider short-duration and drought-tolerant crops instead of water-intensive paddy.

The warning offered the government an opportunity to move beyond advisories and prepare a detailed operational plan covering reservoir releases, crop protection, drinking-water security, groundwater conservation and compensation for crop losses. Yet the worsening conditions have now forced the administration to accelerate drought assessments and formulate coordinated departmental responses.

On October 23, the Cabinet sub-committee on the El Niño impact decided to identify drought-affected mandals by October 31. Preliminary assessments had identified 358 mandals as potentially affected, while groundwater conditions were reported to be critical in 324 mandals. The government also released Rs One crore to each district collector from emergency funds.

However, why did district-level contingency planning and the mobilisation of relief resources not acquire the same urgency when the Agriculture Department first flagged the risks in July?

Farmers left to shoulder the losses

For farmers across the state, the consequences are already tangible. A prolonged dry spell has left farmers struggling to provide irrigation to standing crops, while the depletion of village tanks has weakened an important source of water for rural agriculture.

Some farmers have reportedly resorted to hiring water tankers to save paddy fields, adding to their expenditure on seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, labour and electricity. Those relying on borewells face the additional uncertainty of falling groundwater levels and the cost of drilling deeper or seeking alternative sources.

The government’s own preliminary assessment of critical groundwater conditions in 324 mandals underlines the scale of the problem. When borewells and tanks fail together, small and marginal farmers have few alternatives. A missed irrigation cycle can damage a crop irreversibly, leaving the cultivator with debt but little income to repay it.

Meanwhile, the handling of the drought situation in Telangana also stands in contrast to the responses initiated by neighbouring Maharashtra and Karnataka, both of which moved earlier to identify affected areas and roll out specific relief and contingency measures.

While the Congress government in Karnataka, so far, has written three letters to the central government seeking central assistance and assess the drought situation in state, the Congress government in Telangana has not yet wrote a letter to the central government, apart from passing a resolution in the state Legislative Assembly urging the central government to extend Rs 20,000 crore as assistance.