November 30, 2018

2018: ITP Highlight #06

In 2017, Tamil Nadu government announced Kudimaramathu, to revive traditional institutions for tank management and upkeep. Sakthi and Shah present an early assessment of the ambitious scheme...

Will Kudimaramathu make communities Think Tanks again?

A study of tanks in transit, coping mechanism of communities and government action

R. Sakthivadivel and Manisha Shah



Like rest of Southern India, tanks in Tamil Nadu also suffered massive deterioration as irrigation moved towards being more atomistic and less community-managed. Tank institutions declined and what remained of these irrigation tanks evolved into percolation tanks. In 2017, Tamil Nadu government announced Kudimaramathu scheme to revive the age old practice of community participation in tank repair and management. The program has tried to bring farmers together to form WUAs to take up activities for tank rehabilitation but like many other programs in the country, do these institutions exist only on paper? Has the scheme managed to make groundwater irrigation sustainable for farmers? This ITP Highlight brings observations from the field, notes some best practices, and outlines areas where the program could do better.









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