Farmers fighting for water

I am going to relate a true story of my efforts to obtain my basic entitlement of water from the Minneriya Wewa to cultivate my paddy for both the Yala and Maha season.

Sri Lanka has had an elaborate system of irrigation transporting gravity fed water from Irrigation Tanks to paddy fields. While this was a documented system in the ancient kingdoms of a thousand years ago, many of the old tanks were considerably renovated and strengthened in the 20th century to irrigate new lands that had been given to settlor farmers under various colonisation schemes.

In my case I receive water from the Minneriya Wewa to irrigate my paddy fields. We are never certain when the first water will be given making it very difficult for us to plan our planting schedule. This is a bureaucratic snafu that affects farmers, but the irrigation engineers not being farmers don't realize that we need at least a month to plan our planting schedule and we need to know for certain when we will get water. For example this year we were told the water would be given on 20th April and in reality it was after April 29th that I got even a dribble into my land.

So much like a tree the main canals transport the water to smaller branches and then to the twigs. So I am at the end of a twig (a podi ela) called LB3. I am the final recipient of this water. When it rains, all the farmers, shut their poles (the pipes that divide water to each farmer along the way) and I get a flood into my land which I have to hastily divert away from my fields, causing some excess flooding and top soil erosion. We are all assigned a section of the ela to clear of weeds and debris before the water is sent so that there is a smooth flow of water.

Their are irrigation engineers who are assigned elas which they should periodically check for correct altitude gravity flow to ensure all those eligible get their fare share of water. This water is primarily sent to land that is for paddy cultivation, though if some farmers wish to cultivate vegetables on paddy land they too can use this water. However with division of some land into smaller plots along the roads that go alongside the elas, people in the village also divert some water into their land to help with their vegetable crops etc and make unauthorised drains leading water into their properties.

When water is scarce as is the case at the moment, farmers up the canal divert more water to their fields by either raising the level of earth just past their pole, diverting more water than they should to their fields and sometimes placing obstructions in the canal. This means that I sometimes do not even get a drop of water into my land.

When one is planting paddy and there is no water, it is the most serious problem we can face. When we appeal to the Ela Niyogithaya, the appointed person for our section, he just shrugs and passes the problem up the line of hierarchy and ends with the irrigation engineer to come and rule on the issue. As always knowing the pace of government servants, we invariably get his visit on a day the water is not sent to us. (our Ela gets water three days of a week) He cannot therefore determine the gravity of the problem and short of shutting off unauthorised drains, by blocking them, cannot do anything more.

I have to therfore wake up at about 11pm, when my neighboring farmers are asleep, some by now in an alcoholic stupor from the moonshine they have been imbibing in, and go and shut their poles, so I can get water to my fields. This exercise can take up to two hours. I then have to go again at 5 am before they awake and remove the obstructions, lest I incurr their wrath and possible violence. I am left with no other alternative if I am to survive. I must confess I did not know about this type of problem until I came to work the land. I am told by farmers that it is a common problem faced by them and even in open fields where water goes from one person's field to anothers, diversions and late night shenanigans are commonplace. I to this day have never even read about this problem in the press. (obviously those who journalists who write articles are neither paddy farmers nor are they sons of paddy farmers.)

This year we were advised to only till 75% of our land as there was not enought water to work all the land, however while I adhered to this, my neighbors did not, so they are again taking more water than they are entitled to at my expense and there is nothing I can do about it. You cannot force a farmer to only till 75% of the land as he feels he needs to work all the land if he has to make ends meet. So when we are sent less water, those further down the canals suffer doubly.

This an ongoing issue that has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, and noted in the earlier article, I had to approach my planting using a new technique to reduce my exposure to the water problem by ensuring that I am able to harvest my paddy a full month ahead of the rest, so I am not stuck in the last month when the water issue will become unbearable for me as everyone will want it before harvest when the tanks are about to exhaust their water prior to harvest, replenished by the North East monsoon rains.