Telangana state is notorious for large scale migration of farmers and farm workers every year in search of work to several parts of the country. However, Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao claims that his government’s flagship programme Mission Kakatiya helps for return of the natives. The state is now witnessing a reverse migration of labour after the successful implementation of first two phases of the programme, he said.

The prestigious programme of the government Mission Kakatiya is intended 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.

The Government has prioritized to take the restoration of minor irrigation tanks at 20 per cent of tanks every year for five years, so that to store their original capacity and to effectively utilize 255 TMC

After conducting a review of the programme, Harish Rao said that people who migrated from Telangana are gradually returning to their places and plan to take up different employment activities including fisheries. He said agriculture labourers and other workers who earlier used to migrate from Telangana to other parts of country had started reverse migration.

“Such labour had already returned to Narayankhed, Andole, Narsapur and other parts of the State in substantial numbers,” Rao said. He assured that there was no dearth of work in rural areas at least for the next two years as Mission Kakatiya Phase I and II were yielding positive results. The phase III works were also in the pipeline.