Rajasthan Irrigation and Water Projects: Canals and Dams

Rajasthan holds about a tenth of the land of India and only a very small share of its surface water, so nearly every irrigated acre in the state depends on water stored behind a dam, lifted from a well or carried in from another basin. The irrigation map of the state therefore falls into three parts: the long canals of the north west that bring Sutlej and Beas water across the desert, the dams of the south east that hold the Chambal and the Mahi, and the wells that quietly water most of the irrigated land. Examiners like the topic because every project ties a river to a district, and usually to a name and a year as well.

How Rajasthan waters its fields

Wells and tube wells are by far the largest source and irrigate about seventy per cent of the irrigated area of the state. Canals come second and are concentrated in Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh, Kota, Bundi and Baran, while tanks and other minor works make up the rest. Because the water table has fallen sharply in much of the state, sprinkler and drip irrigation have spread faster in Rajasthan than in most states, and the Narmada canal command in the west was the first in the country where micro irrigation was made compulsory for every farmer taking canal water.

The Indira Gandhi Canal Project

The canal was conceived by the engineer Kanwar Sain in 1948 as the Rajasthan Canal, and its foundation stone was laid on 31 March 1958. It was renamed the Indira Gandhi Canal in 1984. The water is drawn from the Harike barrage in Punjab, which stands just below the meeting of the Sutlej and the Beas. A lined feeder of about 204 kilometres carries it to the Rajasthan border and the main canal then runs about 445 kilometres into the Thar, ending near Mohangarh in Jaisalmer. Stage I commands Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh and northern Bikaner; Stage II carries the water on to Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Barmer and Jodhpur. A series of lift canals, among them the Kanwar Sain, Pannalal Barupal, Chaudhary Kumbharam, Dr Karni Singh and Rajeev Gandhi lift canals, raises water to land lying above the canal, and the Rajeev Gandhi lift canal also carries drinking water towards Jodhpur. The canal turned bare sand into a two crop tract of wheat, mustard, cotton and gram, but in parts of Stage I the same water has brought waterlogging and salinity, which the papers call the sem problem.

The older canals of the north west

The Gang Canal is the oldest canal of Rajasthan. It was built by Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner and opened in 1927, taking Sutlej water from the Hussainiwala headworks near Ferozepur into Sri Ganganagar, where it still waters the rabi crop. The Bhakra Nangal project on the Sutlej is shared by Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan: the Bhakra dam stands at Bhakra in Himachal Pradesh and holds the Gobind Sagar reservoir, and Rajasthan draws its share through the Bhakra canal system into Hanumangarh and Sri Ganganagar. The Sidhmukh and Nohar project carries the same Sutlej and Ravi water further south into Churu and Hanumangarh.

The Chambal Valley Project

The Chambal rises at Janapav hill in the Vindhyan highlands of Madhya Pradesh, flows north through Rajasthan and joins the Yamuna. The Chambal Valley Project is a joint venture of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in which the cost and the benefits are shared equally. Four structures stand on the river, in this order from upstream to downstream.

The right main canal irrigates Kota, Bundi and Baran, the most canal irrigated tract of Rajasthan, and the left main canal serves Madhya Pradesh.

Projects of the south, the east and the west

Mahi Bajaj Sagar near Banswara holds the Mahi and is shared with Gujarat, Rajasthan taking forty five per cent of the water. Bisalpur dam on the Banas in Tonk district is the state's great drinking water project and supplies Jaipur, Ajmer and Tonk besides irrigating Tonk itself. Jawai dam in Pali, built in the time of Maharaja Umaid Singh of Jodhpur, is the lifeline of the Godwar tract, and the Jakham dam in Pratapgarh is the highest dam of the state. Panchana in Karauli is an earthen dam thrown across five streams, Som Kamla Amba serves Dungarpur, and Mansi Wakal supplies Udaipur city. The Narmada canal brings Sardar Sarovar water to Jalore and Barmer, which makes Rajasthan the tail end state of that command. The Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project, planned around links between the Parbati, the Kalisindh and the Chambal, is meant to carry the monsoon surplus of the Chambal basin to the eastern districts.

Traditional water harvesting of the desert

Long before the canals, the desert lived on structures a candidate should be able to pair with their region: the khadin of Jaisalmer, a bund across a rocky slope that farms the moisture it traps; the tanka or kund, an underground tank for roof and courtyard rain water; the nadi and the johad, village ponds that hold run off; the bawdi and the jhalara, stepped wells of the towns; the toba of Barmer; and the beri or kui dug beside a dune to tap the thin band of water under it. These names are asked as matching pairs, and they are also the answer to questions on what the state is doing about its falling water table.