Tank Irrigation in India

The Tank irrigation is more in the rocky plateau area of the county, where the rainfall is uneven and highly seasonal. The Eastern Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Interiors of Tamil Nadu and some parts of Andhra Pradesh have more land under tank irrigation. It is an old‐established practice, particularly in semi‐arid tropical parts of South India, but is today a neglected resource, and irrigation tanks are underutilized due to mismanagement.

The development of the means of irrigation like wells and tube wells is not possible because of stony land on one hand: it is easy to collect rain water in natural or artificial pits because of impermeable rocks on the other hand. There is no permeation of water in the ground. If the contribution of tank irrigation in the total irrigated land is estimated, Tamil Nadu ranks first with 18.42% of total irrigated land. It is followed by Odisha (14.60 %), Andhra Pradesh (13.44 %), Kerala (10.26 %) and Karnataka (6.36 %).