BELAGAVI: The river Krishna, the lifeline of at least three districts in North Karnataka and a major one in South India, today presents a grim picture — of death and decay of lakhs of fish and other aquatic life — in taluks like Athani, Raibag and Chikkodi of Belagavi district as it has all but dried up. Except for small patches of water, what is striking is the stench emanating from the river bed.
For about two months now, people who depend on the river water too have been struggling as villages are not even supplied with water by tankers. “We have not seen such a situation in the past 35-40 years. Whenever the river dried up, water would be released from reservoirs within a week. But this time, no water has been released for the past two months. Our sugarcane crops have already started to wilt. It’s a struggle to get drinking water for us and for our cattle,” said Shrishail Naik, a farmer from Bavansoudatti.
“In this sweltering heat, we have to spend about half a day just looking for patches of water to collect for drinking purposes,” rues Sujata Awale of Manjari village.
Usually, political leaders would prevail upon the Maharashtra government every year to release about 4 tmcft of water from Koyna and Rajapur reservoirs during summer months. But this time, with politicians busy with elections, it has been left to the officialdom to tackle the issue. But their efforts have not yielded any result so far.
Belagavi in-charge Deputy Commissioner Rajendra K V said, “The situation is grave. The issue has been brought to the notice of the principal secretary of the major irrigation department at a recent video-conference. We are in regular talks with Maharashtra government at the bureaucrat level and we are hopeful of getting water soon. We have planned to take up natural resource management programmes to mitigate this situation,” he said.
The situation is so bad that borewells and open wells too have started drying in Athani, Chikkodi and Raibag taluks. Most farmers have not cultivated any crops due to non-availability of water, while already cultivated sugarcane crops are drying. There is no water for cattle too in the villages.
Crocodiles entering farms, villages
Crocodiles are present in large numbers in the Krishna river basin in the three taluks. With no water in the river, the crocodiles are entering sugarcane fields and villages. More than 20 crocodiles have been found in fields and villages in past one month in Chikkodi taluk while six crocodiles were found in Hulagbali village in Athani taluk last week. People in these taluks have stopped going to farms fearing crocodiles.