The lake that disappeared from the map before it disappeared from the ground

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The first thing you notice is that the water has an edge to it now. Not the soft, uncertain edge of a tank that fills and empties with the season, but a straight line, cut by a compound wall that runs for almost four hundred metres along what used to be the northern bund.

Behind the wall, the ground has been levelled and marked into rectangles. Small cement pillars carry numbers painted in red. Plot 14. Plot 15. Plot 16.

What the records say

In the revenue records, this survey number is still classified as nanjai poramboke — land belonging to the tank, which cannot be sold, allotted or built upon. A copy of the village map obtained from the taluk office shows the tank's full boundary intact, all 43 acres of it.

The map has not been updated since 2011.

"Every year the water came a little less far. We thought it was the rain. Then one year there was a wall."

That is a retired schoolteacher who has lived beside the tank for fifty-one years. He asked not to be named, because his son works in a government office in the same district.

Why it matters beyond one village

An irrigation tank is not only a place where water sits. It is the reason the wells around it have water at all. When a tank shrinks, the groundwater under the surrounding fields falls with it, usually within three to four years. Farmers then deepen their borewells, which costs money, which pushes them towards crops that need less water but earn less, which pushes the next generation towards the city.

None of that shows up as an environmental story. It shows up as migration.

• The tank's registered extent: 43 acres
• Roughly what remains under water at full storage today: 19 acres
• Number of wells within a one-kilometre radius: at least 60
• Last recorded desilting work: 2014

What happens next

An RTI application has been filed with the district administration asking for the current classification of the survey number and any change-of-use orders issued since 2011. That reply is due in thirty days. This story will be updated when it arrives.

If you live near a tank, lake or eri where something similar is happening, send photographs and the survey number if you know it. Documents can be sent to the newsroom email — names are never published without permission.