Rebuilding the Nattukanni Canal

Nattukanni is a feeder canal which brings Cauvery water from the Thirunagiri Canal to the Maniyaru Canal in the Sirkali taluk of Nagapatinam district of Tamil Nadu state. The Maniyaru is an irrigation canal that takes water to 6 of the neighbouring villages, and is used primarily for cultivating 1 or 2 crops of Paddy by the farmers depending upon the availability of water. Nattukanni plays a vital role in connecting the 2 canals, thereby enabling the water to flow to the 6 villages which primarily been dependant on this source for irrigation. The lives and livelihoods of the farmers primarily depend upon the efficiency of the Nattukanni in bringing sufficient water for taking up crops. Nattukanni in Tamil refers to country canal, and signifies it as a female goddess.

This canal had been abandoned for ages. The survey and de-silting work in Nattukani was carried out in 1921 during British rule, nearly 85 years ago and hence the canal has shrunk significantly due to encroachments of the farmers. The size of the canal was reduced from an original 18 feet to a current width of 6 feet. The issue of de-silting the canal was highly sensitive to address due to the local power relationship in dealing with encroachments and in sharing the water resources to the neighbouring villages.

Water being a scarce resource, there is always tensions between neighbouring states (Tamil Nadu and Karnataka & Kerala) and this often becomes a political agenda for the southern states of India in grabbing votes. Whilst water is being considered as ‘life and blood’ for the farmers, this tensions always percolates between two neighbouring community on sharing the water in an equitable manner. Nevertheless, the power relations between the two neighbouring community in the district is extremely complex often exacerbated by the local politics. The issue is to deal with encroachments of the fellows farmers along the canal banks, which is extremely sensitive and the question is ‘who will bell the cat’ – neither the farmers organized themselves collectively to address their problem in water sharing nor the local government intervened to settle this issues in the last 85 years.

This was a biggest challenge for CCD when the farmers of the six villages who benefits out of the Nattukanni existence requested CCD to de-silt the canal to its original dimensions. The unique approach that CCD had followed in the district is building the institutional capacity of the farming community. CCD has organized farmers groups in all the 34 target villages and networked nearly 2500 farmers into two farmer’s federations – a legal entity and a collective organized mass, through which the most of the initiatives have been carried out by CCD.  

CCD sought the support of Government to survey the original dimensions of the Nattuikanni canal and Government provided the assistance and mapped the canal. With the massive mobilization of farmers from the six villages, with the help of federation leaders and from the support of Government, CCD could able to address the encroachment and complete the desiltation work of Nattukanni. They could able to widen the canal to 18 feet and 2 KMs length of canal was desilted.

The impact of the initiative is that adequate water is reaching all the six tail end villages of the canal benefiting 800 acres of farm lands. It is interesting to note that average cost of this initiative is just Rs. 250 per acre (800 acres X 250 = INR 200,000), however the complication in the intervention is addressing the power relation between the villagers on water sharing. There are similar such 1000’s of Nattukanni’s are abandoned in the Country, however needs a strong collective community mobilization to entitle their rights.

Based on this experience, Concern Worldwide is presently involved with NCRC (NGO Coordination and Resource Centre, Nagapatinam) to map the water resources in the district and address the same through advocacy and lobby with the government. 

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