Asia’s largest drip irrigation project by MEIL in Karnataka to take off Sunday

HYDERABAD: Asia’s largest drip irrigation project, involving 2,150 kilometres of pipeline, at Ramthal Marola area of Bhagalkot district in Karnataka, will take off on Sunday.

The project, executed by one of India’s largest infrastructure firms Megha Engineering & Infrastructures (MEIL), will be inaugurated by the Karnataka water resources minister MB Patil.

The project, envisioned by Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigam and built with technical assistance from the Israel firm Netafim, the first project in India with Israeli drip irrigation technology, will be maintained by MEIL for five years.


Utilizing the backwaters of Almatti project, this drip irrigation scheme is envisaged to alleviate the hardships faced by the local farmers for many decades in the past. As opposed to regular drip irrigation projects, the pipeline system used for this project was laid underground.

MEIL claims that while most of the pipes laid underground will not last for more than 10-15 years, the pipes for this project in Karnataka were made of fiber optic material and will last for more than 50 years.

The farmers had initially refused to hand over their lands for the project but were later convinced over the benefits of irrigating an ayacut of a combined acreage of over 12,300 acres.

The farmers in the Ramthal Marola region weren’t receiving adequate water to cultivate single crop a year while farmers with holdings closer to the ayacut had two crops annually, leading to frequent protests.

“As a part of this drip irrigation scheme, every farmer will receive water through a cylinder installed in their respective farmlands. All the required fertilizers and pesticides can also mixed and put into the cylinder,” said MEIL in a statement on Saturday. “This system will help in eliminating water wastage. The technology used in this project will also purify the wastage that flows in the backwaters of River Krishna.”

The Karnataka water resources ministry claims that this project will reduce water usage, reduce pesticide usage, reduce costs, and increase yields for around 6,000 farmers of Ramthal Marola region.