Start with the smallest village

Their friend, Vinod Bhai, a trader from the Bhal, had donated a lakh of rupees. He put it on the table and said, 8220;You are an economist. Show us how we can have development in Ukardi.8221; Having come back from Delhi after spearheading the late Rajiv Gandhi8217;s industrial reform and then agro-climatic planning, I was intrigued. In August 8217;91, Mikhail Gorbachev was to go for his famous holiday in the Black Sea to return to the fall of the Soviet Union; the Pakistani UNFPA chief, Nafis Sadiq, was warning us of the dire consequences of neglecting population policies and I went to Ukardi. To cut a long story short, we were to zero in on water. There were two talavs and some smaller talavdis in Ukardi. We were to deepen them and store water. We were to improve the percolation of water and raise water levels. The lakh of rupees were to be added on to an employment scheme to deepen the talavs.

I kept going back to Ukardi and sent my friends there. The use of oliyas, oil pumps to pump out water for irrigation, became popular and soon the village was growing a lot more of cotton and paddy. Then the second generation problems of credit came up and I took a Nabard team there to bring back the non-eligible farmers to the credit coops through debt rescheduling.

In my trips we had talked of vikas. To Ambhubhai Shah, the intoxication of vikas was to replace the country liquor that thakurs partook of. The hydrology of these dryland ponds is unreliable and by the mid-8217;80s, Ambubhai and me were dreaming of Narmada waters supplementing the rainfall. But more immediately, in one of my trips, the greatest pleasure came when a high school student proudly answered a question on the relationship between digging programmes under the employment scheme and the higher storage capacity created in the talaav. The naasha of vikas was to catch on with the youngsters. Ambhubhai and me were to ask the villagers to put up cooperatives to prepare for the Narmada waters. They, unfortunately, listened to us, but the memsahibs and sahibs in Delhi delayed the arrival of the waters.

Since then Narmada did matter, but in another way. My friend Sanat Mehta took the decision that the distribution systems were to be built wherever possible with silt excavated from village tanks. This happened in Ukardi and adjoining villages.It was a bold and good decision, for initially the irrigation engineers took the view that tanks do not exist. In other words, they would not take cognisance of them. In paddy equivalents, Ukardi8217;s production went up by ten thousand maunds. In the beginning it used to be paddy and cotton, but as the cycle of low cotton prices started in the mid-8217;90s with large imports, the villagers gave up the struggle to keep cotton profitable. It was paddy all the way. But this is a story of happiness with tank irrigation. For even with paddy they are happy.

Now Narmada waters are available and, in fact, can reach the Chuwhal. But Delhi has to help us to covering the last mile. It should ensure mean that water reaches the farmer. The expression 8216;covering the last mile8217; to the best of my knowledge was used by the late Rajiv Gandhi in the drought of 8217;87. It should mean reaching the farmer with water as it did in the Special Foodgrain Production Plan in 1988. If this interpretation is taken, the Sardar Sarovar distribution systems will get the highest priority in the Advanced Irrigation Benefit Project in the Annual Plan 8217;04.

Come on, Delhi, it is now your turn to back Ukardi! As I argued at Moscow last week in the expert meetings around the Irrigation and Drainage Commission, all irrigation works have to start at the smallest village.