The site of the incomplete irrigation project

1980: The largest irrigation plan in Assam — the Champamati project — is announced. With a budget of Rs 15 crore, the project is expected to water 24,994 hectares, be completed by 1984 and benefit parts of Bongaigaon and Kokrajhar districts.

2008: Champamati project has a revised budget of Rs 156 crore but has only 20 of the 120 canals that were supposed to be built 24 years ago. In the meantime, Chirang has been carved out of Bongaigaon but the benefits of Champamati remain elusive.

Jan. 4: For 28 years they dug their own canals and wells, walked miles to the nearest river when the wells dried up and quarrelled over who will get to water his field first, while the multi-crore irrigation project next door gathered dust, thanks to administrative apathy. Yesterday they thought enough was enough.

Farmers from over 10 villages marched to the irrigation office at Dhaligaon in Chirang and forced several senior officers, including the subdivisional officer and the executive engineer of Champamati irrigation project, to visit canal number 3, which is under construction, for inspection. They also sought an explanation from the department for the project’s failure.

Champamati, in fact, has a lot of believe-it-or-not stories.

For one, not a single irrigation officer has visited the site of the project — which is in Nangdorbar along the Kokrajhar-Chirang border — in the past 28 years. “This is the first time that any officer is visiting this place for an inspection,” a villager said.

The tardy pace of work has to be seen to be believed.Of the 37 regulators, only eight have been completed. The plan mentions 270 drains, but only 72 have been constructed so far. A mere 50 of the planned 197 bridges have been built.

After yesterday’s prod, the executive engineer of the irrigation project is now promising to do in four months what the department has failed to do in 27 years — make the project functional.