Damaging the Parakrama Samudraya relapanawa

I wonder what the Government Agent at Polonnaruwa was doing while the relapanawa of the Parakrama Samudraya was being removed or damaged, to make a walkway. Walkways have to be appreciated, but to damage the irrigation heritage that our forefathers have bequeathed to us is unforgivable.

  The GA’s residence is on the bund, and he must have known what was happening. The GA is the highest-ranking officer in the District, and to my thinking, though the Parakrama Samudraya belongs to the Irrigation Department, this action should have been his concern.

The Parakrama Samudraya is a masterpiece of irrigation engineering.

I gained knowledge of irrigation works when I was in the Agrarian Services. Minor irrigation projects were taken over from the GAs and handed over to the Agrarian Services Department.

I was in charge of minor irrigation work in the Anuradhapura District in 1963 and ‘64, when my team of Technical Assistants and Cultivation Superintendents repaired tanks.

At the base of a tank bund there is a core of puddled mud mixed and settled in like concrete. The earth is put over this puddle mud and the relapanawa is to withstand the waves and the water beating on the bund. I have on my inspections seen how waves beat the bunds, and the stone relapanawa is an essential part of a tank bund, to ensure that the earth on the tank bund can withstand the beating it gets from the water of the tank. This does not mean beating when the tank is full.

  I wonder why no one in the irrigation Department talked. The relapanawa is an accepted integral part of any tank. We should be very thankful to the Maha Sangha who took up this cause.

Our irrigation works are precious marvels bequeathed to us. There would be no life in Polonnaruwa if not for the Parakrama Samudraya.

The gradient of the Jaya Ganga, the 50-mile canal that brings water from the Kalawewa to Nachchaduwa and finally to the City Tanks in Anuradhapura is on a gradient of six inches to a mile, i.e. six inches  to 5280 feet or to 63,360 inches. It is a gradient that defies all engineering knowledge today. This came to the fore when I presided over the Cultivators Meeting of the Tanks under the Jaya Ganga in 1963, when to settle the problem of the water not reaching all tanks in time suggested a concrete base for the full length. The District Irrigation Engineer was baffled and was silent for over five minutes and then he replied that it cannot be done. How do you attend to repairs to the Jaya Ganga I quipped, and he admitted that  they would never dare to touch the entirety of the Jaya Ganga, but would attend to limited work  in disconnected sections.

This is what I said in my book, ‘How the IMF ruined Sri Lanka’: “We are all novices in the vast field of irrigation.  The Kashmiri Chronicle, the Rajatarangani,  tells us that King Dighadipa wanted irrigation engineers from Sri Lanka in the ninth century. Has anyone ever heard of the ancient tanks collecting silt? Our ancient engineers knew the art of designing tanks in such a manner that silt did not collect in them. It has so happened that we do not have the administrative and technical capacity to even maintain the vast irrigation systems  that have been handed over on a platter to us by our ancient engineers.” (From ’How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka and Alternative Programmes of Success’, Godages, 2006)

It is necessary to replace the removed relapanawa immediately, before the November rains. Otherwise, the Parakrama Samudraya is very likely to breach. In Nuwarakalaviya it is not the rain we know in Colombo. It is a deluge that lasts for days. That will be a major disaster.

GARVIN KARUNARATNE

Former G.A. Matara