T.N. should pursue project to link Godavari and Cauvery to address water needs: VIT Chancellor

The Tamil Nadu government should pursue project to interlink Godavari (Inchampalli) – Cauvery (Grand Anicut), which will benefit the State to meet its water requirements, especially for agriculture, G. Viswanathan, founder and chancellor, VIT, said on Thursday.

In his presidential address at the eighth edition of Agri Expo 2026, which was organised by School of Agricultural Sciences of VIT at its campus here, he said that the interlinking of the two rivers where Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are riparian States would not only benefit farmers of Tamil Nadu but the entire agrarian community in South India. “Tamil Nadu should play a key role in interlinking of these two rivers, which is a long pending one, for the benefit of farmers in the south of Vindhyas,” he said.

The Chancellor said that the State government, on its part, should build more check dams and better water harvesting structures in the State. In other words, these proactive measures of the Tamil Nadu government could save at least 400 tmc feet of excess rainwater from the Cauvery river that flows into the sea every monsoon. The excess water from the Cauvery could be diverted to other major seasonal rivers like Palar, Cheyyar, and Pennaiyar to help farming in the region, he said.

Mr.Viswanathan emphasised the importance of water for better yield in agriculture. For example, India’s crop yields stand between 30 per cent and 60 per cent of potential levels. In other words, the country’s total wheat yield was about one-third of that of France, and rice yield was roughly half of that of China. “Agriculture should be profitable to retain talent,” he said.

Speaking on the occasion, R. Selvarajan, Director, National Research Centre for Banana (NRCB), in Tiruchi under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), highlighted India’s agricultural progress since the Bengal famine of 1943, which claimed millions of lives. The Green Revolution, starting in 1965, boosted food grain production by approximately 6.6 times to around 353 million tonnes, he said.

The two-day expo was inaugurated by Mr. Viswanathan in the presence of K. B. Srinivasan, Vice-President, Coromandel International Limited and N. Suresh, State Marketing Manager, IFFCO Tamil Nadu.