Indira Gandhi Canal

The Indira Gandhi Canal is one of the biggest canal projects in India.It starts from the Harike Barrage at Sultanpur, a few kilometers below the confluence of the Sutlej and Beas rivers in Punjab state. It runs south-southwest in Punjab and Haryana but mainly in Rajasthan for a total of 650 kilometers and ends near at Ramgarh, near Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan. Kanwar Sain the Chief engineer of Bikaner state was the first to come up the idea of the canal.

Its construction started on the 31st March,1958, inaugurated by then Home Minister Govind Ballabh Pant. It was built with the aim of converting part of the Thar desert from wasteland to agriculturally productive land. It was earlier known as the Rajasthan Canal. The name was changed on the 2nd Nov,1984.

It uses water released from the Pong dam and provides irrigation facilities to the north-western region of Rajasthan, a part of the Thar Desert. It consists of the Rajasthan feeder canal (with the first 167 km in Punjab and Haryana and the remaining 37 km in Rajasthan) and 445 km of the Rajasthan main canal which is entirely within Rajasthan. The IGNP traverses seven districts of Rajasthan: Barmer, Bikaner, Churu, Hanumangarh, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, and Sriganganagar.

The Green revolution in Rajasthan

After the construction of the Indira Gandhi Canal, irrigation facilities were available over an area of 6770 km² in Jaisalmer district and 37 km² in Barmer district.Irrigation had already been provided in an area of 3670 km²...
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