"When the well is dry we know the real worth of water"
Benjamin Franklin, 1840
By Ranjit Mulleriyawa-August 5, 2014, 9:06 pm
Drought is not an unusual event for inhabitants of Sri Lanka’s ‘dry zone’. It is a reality which they have had to contend with since time immemorial. It is the necessity of tiding over the rain-less (dry) period extending from April to September, which resulted in the construction of an ingenious system of village ‘tanks’ ( reservoirs) by our ancestors, to collect and preserve the precious rainfall of four months (October-January) during the North-East monsoon season. What is unique this year is the degree of severity of the drought occurring as early as July.