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| A screenshot of the video which shows water filling up the bed of Kalavapalli river at Anantapur |
A touching video of villagers hooting and welcoming the flooding of Kalavapalli river in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh has gone viral globally.
The video originating in a Facebook page and distributed by the likes of The Guardian has clocked millions of views on different platforms.
The video shows a large group of villagers, spread over the dry river bed, shouting in joy as the water begins to flow in. The Kalavapalli river had reportedly gone dry two decades ago.
In large parts of South India, tanks and smaller streams have gone dry due to over exploitation of water. For the affected villagers, loss of water meant destruction of a lifestyle and forced migration to nearby cities in search of manual labour.
Many massive projects are now being undertaken to lift water from major rivers over large distances through canals and pipes to fill up tanks and rivulets, though largely for drinking purposes.
It is not clear when the Kalavapalli river video was taken and the source of its new water.
Interestingly, Ananatpur - where Kalavapalli river is located - is one of the beneficiary districts of the Andhra Pradesh project that diverts surplus Godavari water to Krishna largely to quench the thirst of the parch dry Rayalseema region.
Kurnool, Anantapur, Chittoor and Cuddapah, which constitute Rayalseema, have suffered from parched fields and lack of drinking water.
On September 16, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu flagged off the project by switching on a pump at Pattiseema to commission the just built 54-kilometre canal linking Godavari to Polavaram Right Canal, which will carry water to Krishna.
The Kalavapalli river video was uploaded on September 8, nearly a week ahead of the formal flag-off of the Godavari-Krishna project.
Till we get confirmation from the field, we can only guess that the filling up of Kalavapalli river could have been a possible dry run by the officials to ready the project for formal inauguration.