HYDERABAD: When it was built, Nagarjuna Sagar was touted as a multi-purpose project with the objectives of irrigation and hydroelectric power generation. As years passed by, supplying drinking water to Hyderabad has become just as important with the city of 7 million becoming the powerhouse of the state’s economy, accounting for more than 35 per cent of its GDP.
Some 252 million gallons of water are being pumped every day this summer from the Puttamgandi point of the reservoir to quench Hyderabad’s thirst. It’s been an ever-growing dependence, with the Krishna Drinking Water Supply Project now in the third phase of its execution. All along the 120 km road from Hyderabad to Nagarjuna Sagar, you can see work going at full swing on the latest phase. In villages along the pipeline, this is the big city commandeering their river, their water.
“They are laying another pipeline to Hyderabad,” complained a villager, Gopal, in Peddagudem. “We have a sub-canal here that does not work. The contractors left it incomplete but encashed their bills. And now they are taking more water to Hyderabad everyday.”
At one point along the road, a billboard warns passersby about crocodiles. It looks incongruous in the drought-wracked country but indeed croc breeding along some stretches of the Krishna had proved to be an unexpected success.
But here at the peak of summer, the Nagarjuna Sagar is a reservoir shrunken to its least. The gates of the dam lie open and the milestone marking the dam’s threshold level basks in the sun. On the other side of the dam, the Krishna flows in a trickle to the other Telugu state, Andhra Pradesh.
The reservoir was built to hold 408.24 tmc ft of water with a full reservoir level (FRL) of 590 ft. The present reading is 504.2 ft, below dead storage. In the second half of May, the level is likely to fall below 500.
“There has been steady decline in the frequency of Nagarjuna Sagar filling up. This is a recent phenomenon,” said Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator for the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP). One of the reasons is that a number of hydropower and irrigation projects have been built upstream on the Kirshna by Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Since the Nagarajuna Sagar dam was constructed, as many as 34 hydropower projects have come up in the Krishna river basin, scattered over Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In all of those states, the basin has become a permanent home to drought. No less than 688 big small and medium masonry dams hinder the river, and more than 150 riverfronts are despoiled irreparably in Maharashtra alone. “It has become a zero sum game for all the states,” says Thakkar.
In barely 50 years, the Nagarjuna Sagar project has drifted away from the vision its founders had for it. Just for one instance, the dam has a combined power generation capacity of 956.6 MW. Last year, it generated 83 million units (MU) as against its original capacity of 1718 MU. The 60 MW Left Bank Canal generator did not generate a single unit of power in 2016.
However, it’s not a phenomenon unique to Nagarjuna Sagar. There was a 49.52 per cent drop in power generation by hydro power projects on the Krishna river basin between 1986 and 2011.
It didn’t take long for realization to dawn on Nehru, the high priest of modern India and the progenitor of Nagarjuna Sagar. Barely three years after he laid the foundation stone for the project, he said, “The small irrigation project, the small industries and the small plants for electric power will change the face of the country, far more than a dozen big projects in half a dozen places.”
Sagar water theft: Rampant and casual
The road to Alwala village from Peddagudem is a 15 km long unpaved dirt track with dust bowls on either side. The road winds up to a bridge over Nagarjuna Sagar’s Left canal. Alwala lies on the other side of the bridge. Adjacent to the village is the Alwala tank.
Alwala farmer Koti Reddy points to an outlet from the Left canal. A steady brook issued forth, barely ankle deep. Two women bathed and washed clothes in the middle of the main canal. “This goes to our farms in my village and a few other villages as well,” said Koti Reddy. “We take the water from the Left canal. We operate the valves ourselves.”
Water theft is rampant and casual from Nagarjuna Sagar’s canals. The manual shutters need special tools to operate them, but villagers have devised a way to operate the valve without the need for any tools.
“Water evaporates fast in our paddy fields. So we draw water from here to keep our crop wet. It’s not allowed but no one minds,” said Koti Reddy.
Irrigation officials know about the theft. They do warn farmers periodically and ask local people to report such instances. But they can’t do much more. “It’s not practical for us to monitor all the gate valves. We do not have that kind of manpower,” said one official, asking not to be named.