Cauvery delta farmers are keeping their fingers crossed. They have raised the short-term Kuruvai crop on a greater extent of land than they did last year. The bounty of the Cauvery, evident during the southwest monsoon of 2022, along with a moderate northeast monsoon, must have given them the hope that this time, too, they could benefit from nature. “Besides, the government, I mean the State Agriculture Department, had encouraged the farmers to go in for Kuruvai,” says a former official of the department in Tiruvarur district, who has made Tiruvarur district his home after retirement, despite hailing from a place several hundred kilometres away.
According to Volume V of the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, the delta in Tamil Nadu raises three varieties of paddy — Kuruvai, lasting 105 days between June and October; Thaladi, raised for 165 days, from October to February, in the places where Kuruvai gets harvested; and the long-term, Samba, for 180 days, beginning with transplantation in July and ending with harvest in mid-January, coinciding with the Pongal festival in the Tamil month of Thai.
As of now, neither farmers’ representatives nor officials nor independent observers have received reports of the Kuruvai crop withering. However, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami claimed in a statement on August 26 that the crop had withered in some villages of Thalainayar block in Nagapattinam. “In fact, a section of farmers, after observing poor or no flow of water, destroyed the crop that showed signs of stunted growth. I would say a considerable number of farmers did it,” says V. Sathyanarayanan, general secretary, Consortium of Cauvery Delta Farmers, Tiruvarur, who skipped Kuruvai this time.
