Farmers in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district are facing a deepening water crisis as the combined storage across the district's major dams has plummeted to just 12 per cent of total capacity, raising serious concerns about irrigation availability for nearly 34,000 acres of agricultural land in the upcoming sowing season. The situation, officials and farmers agree, hinges almost entirely on the performance of the advancing southwest monsoon.

How Bad Is the Storage Deficit

According to available data, the seven major dams in Dharmapuri currently hold only around 12 per cent of their combined storage capacity of 4,267 million cubic feet (mcft). These reservoirs — excluding the smaller Echambadi dam — collectively provide irrigation support to 33,948 acres of farmland. Water levels have fallen sharply following the failure of last year's northeast monsoon, which is a primary recharge source for reservoirs across the region.

The district recorded only about 690 mm of rainfall last year against its average annual figure of 942 mm — a significant shortfall that directly drained reservoir inflows and left storage critically depleted heading into the current agricultural cycle.

Why Farmers Are Alarmed

Agriculture is the backbone of Dharmapuri's economy, with cultivation spread across nearly two lakh hectares. Farming activity is heavily dependent on seasonal rainfall, and with water reserves at critically low levels, cultivators fear that irrigation supplies will be inadequate once sowing begins. Intermittent summer showers in recent weeks have offered marginal relief but have not made a meaningful dent in reservoir levels.

This comes amid a broader pattern of erratic rainfall in the district, with seasonal deficits becoming a recurring concern for farmers who have little buffer storage to fall back on when monsoons underperform. Notably, the northeast monsoon's failure last year compounded the impact of an already below-normal southwest monsoon, leaving dams with little time to recover before the next cultivation cycle.

What Officials Have Said

Water Resources Department officials have sought to reassure farmers, expressing confidence that the advancing southwest monsoon will bring sufficient rainfall to improve dam storage levels in the coming weeks. They attributed the current shortfall primarily to the northeast monsoon's failure and indicated that reservoir inflows are expected to pick up as monsoon activity intensifies.

Drought Relief on the Table

Agricultural stakeholders have warned that if the southwest monsoon also underperforms, authorities may need to consider declaring Dharmapuri drought-prone and extending relief measures to affected farmers. The prospect of a second consecutive below-normal monsoon year would place severe stress on the district's farming community, which has already absorbed the losses from last year's rainfall deficit.

Farmers are closely tracking the monsoon's northward progression, with the next few weeks considered critical for determining whether the sowing season can proceed at anything close to normal scale.