Saving the day,drip by drip

At Ratu village in Ranchi district,farmers use buckets to pull water from wells to irrigate their fields. Repeating the work in...

 At Ratu village in Ranchi district,farmers use buckets to pull water from wells to irrigate their fields. Repeating the work in quick succession,they hurry up to the beds of crops,pour water over them and sweat as they struggle to reap their harvest. Sixty-five-year old Ram Dayal Singh is compelled to leave his fields barren. He is too weak for the hard toil.

 Then there are farmers of Singhs age,like Dipanker Manjhi,who use the diesel pump. But the pump sucks out much more water than what his crops require.

Men like Singh and Manjhi are not hard to come by in Jharkhands rural belt. With farming being largely rain-fed and little means of irrigation available,hundreds of acres of land remain unused for almost six months every year. Many farmers who cultivate a single crop of paddy are forced to migrate to distant areas in search of jobs.

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But the situation is now beginning to look up. At Ranchis Titratoli village,for instance,three farmers have adopted a drip system to irrigate their farms round the year. The system consists of three things pump,tank and pipes.

The pump lifts water from the well to store it in a tank on an elevated platform near the farm. With gravitation at work,farmers use the tank and pipe laid up to each bed of crops to discharge water and fertiliser,mixed with it,as and when required. This,apart from saving labour and containing wastage of water,supplies the right quantity of water needed by the crop.

The result is for all to see.

Amid his bloom of cauliflowers and cabbage,Surendra Mahato (50) is a happy man. He cultivates round the year,saving Rs 10,000. There are others too. Sudhakar Bhagat (45) sold peas worth Rs 10,000 this Sunday. Shankar Singh(60),who has just installed the drip system to irrigate his two- acre plot at Titratoli,says: Today I have no bank balance. But before the onset of monsoon,I will be rich like others.

Started by the state rural development department on an experimental basis on October 2009,under the Swarnajayanti Grameen Swarozgar Yojna,the humble drip has ensured a good crop of vegetables like cauliflower,cabbage,peas and tomato during the past four months despite the drought that the state faced due to late and scanty monsoon last year.

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Says rural development secretary Santosh Kumar Satapathy: Now there is no reason why fields will remain barren in post-paddy seasons.

The drip comes with an annual cost of just Rs 35,600: Rs 25,000 for the tank and pipes,Rs 7,000 for training and Rs 3,600 for monitoring for a year.

To implement this project,the department,in league with the states horticulture mission,provides 50 per cent subsidy to beneficiaries. And guided by the principle of public-private partnership,it had engaged a company,Maati Private Ltd,to monitor the project throughout the year.

More farmers are demanding the drip irrigation system. So much so that we are unable to meet it, said Jayant Ghosh,owner of MPL. Ghosh,an IIM alumni,has recruited a dozen staff. They visit the farms of beneficiaries regularly. They have educated us and made us shift from traditional to scientific farming, said Mahato.