Attitude of farmers towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya Programme in Telangana state

Introduction

The Government of Telangana has initiated restoration of Minor Irrigation Tanks, which have been the life line of Telangana people, since ages and are now becoming extinct slowly and slowly mainly due to neglect of their maintenance and partly due to rapid urbanization. In the state, every village has a tank and tanks from ages are still functioning. Tanks, apart from irrigation, also serve recharging of ground water, meeting the requirement of domestic water needs and livestock and for rearing fish. Tanks are helpful in maintaining ecological balance apart from being centres for socio-economic and religious activities of the village communities. Tanks play an important role in providing assured water supply and prevent to a greater extent the adverse effects on agriculture on account of vagaries of nature and ensure food security in drought prone areas. The Minor Irrigation tanks in the state have lost their original capacity due to ageing and siltation. The Government of Telangana realising the importance of reclamation of tanks for growth in the state, decided to take up restoration of these tanks under "Mission Kakatiya" programme as a peoples movement in a decentralised manner through community involvement in a sustainable manner. All the 46,531 tanks are proposed to be restorated, at the rate of 9350 per year, in a span of 5 years starting from 2014 -15 onwards. The objective of Mission Kakatiya is to enhance the development of agriculture based income for small and marginal farmers, by accelerating the development of minor irrigation infrastructure, strengthening community based irrigation management and adopting a comprehensive programme for restoration of tanks. Mission Kakatiya would have the benefits like increase in water retention capacity of the soil, capacity of the tank, yield and productivity of farms through suitable cropping pattern and increased cropping intensity. Attitude is the degree of positive or negative affect associated with some psychological object (Thurstone and Chave, 1929) [4] . Thus the attitude in this study was operationalised as the degree of positive or negative affect of respondents towards restoration and management of tanks. In this backdrop a study was conducted to know the attitude of farmers towards restoration and management of tanks. www.extensionjournal.com

Methodology

Research design: Quasi-experimental research approach was followed for carrying out the study. Quasi-experiments are non-randomised experiments conducted in nonlaboratory situations. These differ from true experiments as subjects are not randomly assigned to conditions. It has both pre, post, as well as post only test designs. Only the experimental group receives the treatment (Creswell, 2009) [1] .

Sampling procedure

Selection of the State: The State of Telangana was selected purposively because the programme Mission Kakatiya is implemented only in Telangana state.

Selection of Districts: Two districts were selected from each zone, where the highest number of tanks covered in first phase of Mission Kakatiya programme, thus constituting six districts for the study.

Selection of Mandals

One Mandal was selected randomly from each district.

Selection of Villages

Beneficiaries: One village was selected randomly from each mandal, where the Mission Kakatiya was implemented in first phase, thus constituting six villages for the study.

Non-beneficiaries

One village was selected randomly from each mandal, where the Mission Kakatiya was not implemented, thus constituting six villages for the study.

Selection of respondents

 Beneficiaries: 30 beneficiaries were selected randomly from each selected village, thus constituting 180 beneficiaries.  Non-beneficiaries: 30 non -beneficiaries were selected randomly from each selected village, thus constituting 180 non -beneficiaries.

Results and discussion

Attitude of farmers towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya. In order to study the significant difference in respondents in attitude of farmers towards restoration and management of tanks, the data were subjected to 'Z' test and the results are furnished in Table 2. 2, the Zcalculated value of attitude of respondents towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya programme was equal to 8.5 and Z critical two-tail value equal to 1.96. A.H.: There was significant difference between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries with regard to attitude of respondents towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya programme N.H.: There was no significant difference between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries with regard to attitude of respondents towards restoration and management of tanks under

Mission Kakatiya programme

As seen from the Table 2, that the computed 'z' value was found to be positive and significant at 0.05 level of probability for attitude of respondents towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya programme. Hence the Null hypothesis was rejected and the Alternative hypothesis was accepted. So it could be concluded that there was a positive and significant difference between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in attitude of respondents towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya programme. The findings as seen in table 2, expressed that there was significant difference in attitude between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya programme. The probable reason might be the de-silting of tanks improved ground water recharging capacity, increased the capacity of the tank there by increasing the availability of water, water holding capacity of tanks which increased the area under cultivation. This result was in accordance with the results of Prashanth (2014) [3] .

Conclusion

Majority of the beneficiaries had favourable attitude followed by neutral and unfavourable attitude towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya. In case of non-beneficiaries, majorty of the respondents had neutral attitude followed by favourable and unfavourable attitude towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya. There was a positive and significant difference between beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries in attitude of respondents towards restoration and management of tanks under Mission Kakatiya programme. The attitude results provide empirical evidence of how well Mission Kakatiya programme are received at the grassroots level.

References

1. Creswell JW. Research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks (CA): Sage Publications; 2009.
2. Munikishore S. Beneficiaries' attitude and project facilitation services of Sujala Watershed Project [MSc (Ag) thesis]. Dharwad (IN): University of Agricultural Sciences; 2006.
3. Prashanth P. Stakeholder analysis of tank management under project and non-project areas in Andhra Pradesh [PhD thesis]. Hyderabad (IN): Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University; 2014.
4. Thurstone LL, Chave EJ. The measurement of attitude. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press; 1929.