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Andhra Pradesh Forgotten Tanks:- In Andhra Pradesh, as many as eight districts have been declared drought-prone. Tanks were the main source of water supply in these areas for ages. At the end of the First Five Year Plan, there were 58,518 tanks in Andhra Pradesh with an irrigated area of 1.07 million hectares (mha), which is about two-fifths of the irrigated area of the state. Many tanks were built in a series so that no wastage of water took place. Moreover, the storage tanks enriched the water table through percolation. An institutional system also evolved and enabled tanks to be the major source of irrigation. This tradition of tanks as the largest source of irrigation continued until the mid-1960s. There has since been an overall decline in the area irrigated by tanks inspite of a marginal increase in the number of tanks. The situation in drought-prone areas is more alarming. In some of the districts, there has been a reduction in the number of tanks as well as the area irrigated by them. |
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