The concept of irrigation
In the first phase of human civilization in ancient times, agriculture was completely dependent on rain. With time, the need for irrigation was felt for the success of agriculture, thus the history of development of irrigation is also related to the development of human civilization. Along with air, water is also an essential element for life. All ancient civilizations have developed on the banks of rivers (water). In the countries of ancient civilization, India and Egypt, the knowledge of irrigation has been advanced.
About three-fourth of the earth’s surface does not have adequate natural water for crop production. Irrigation facilities are necessary for that. All the countries in the world, especially in tropical and dry countries, are trying to use their natural resources for irrigation and the irrigated area of the world is continuously increasing.
India has been an agricultural country since ancient times. Here 75 percent of the people live on farming. Due to irregular duration of monsoon and amount of rainfall, agriculture has to face disasters. As a result, the importance of irrigation through artificial water supply means increases a lot to maintain the growth of agriculture.
The attention of developing countries is being rapidly attracted towards the importance of irrigation, because for maximum agricultural production, if natural water is not available in proper quantity at the right time, one has to depend on artificial irrigation. To make agriculture profitable, it is very important to develop means of irrigation and irrigated area quickly. It is necessary to solve irrigation problems and to make irrigation schemes more and more useful and profitable and many experiments and research are being done in this direction. These are being given priority in development plans. Scientists and skilled engineers of our country are making efforts in this field. Due to the usefulness of agriculture in India since ancient times, Vedas, Puranas and Smritis have described the glory of irrigation. In Atharva Veda, the relationship between irrigation canal and river has been compared to the relationship between a calf and a cow. In Manu Smritis, it is considered the duty of wealthy men to help the poor class by constructing canals. King Bhagirath can be considered a great engineer who controlled rivers and constructed irrigation works. Considering irrigation as a sacred deed, means of irrigation have been constructed in India since ancient times. Chanakya has also described the subject of irrigation in detail in his Arthashastra. In South India, the Chola kings showed great enthusiasm in expanding irrigation facilities. In the fourteenth century, the Muslim ruler Firoz Shah Tughlaq built canals from the Yamuna and Sutlej rivers, which were later renovated by Akbar in the sixteenth century. Shah Jahan took interest in the construction of canals by carrying forward Akbar’s tradition. In the nineteenth century, during the British period, the Eastern and Western Yamuna canals were built from Yamuna and the Kaveri Delta canals from Kaveri, later major canals like Upper and Lower Ganga Canal and Godavari Delta were built from Ganga.