Tales TDS tells: The Hindu update
The farm wells of Ullukurukkai village in Thimjepalli panchayat of Krishnagiri district are filled to the brim in summer. It is time for paddy crop
The farm wells of Ullukurukkai village in Thimjepalli panchayat of Krishnagiri district are filled to the brim in summer. It is time for paddy crop. Elsewhere in the district, nurseries are being raised and fields prepared to raise the crop. But the punjai lands (dry agricultural lands) of the village, close to the iPhone manufacturing plant of Tata Electronics Private Limited (TEPL), have fallen disquietingly silent. A hundred metres away, this jarring silence is interrupted by the sounds of construction activity. Workers are busy building a wall to demarcate the boundary of the TEPL plant from the adjoining farmlands. A steady flow of water discharges from under the plinth of the new boundary wall of the plant and into an exit channel running through the farmlands. A few metres inside the boundary wall, there are large embankments of sprawling rain-water-harvesting structures or percolation ponds of the plant. In the last week of May, acres of Ullukurukkai’s farmlands were flooded by the water that had reportedly overflowed from the plant’s percolation ponds. The company told officials then that it was only rainwater from the ponds. Collector C. Dinesh Kumar said, “There were two instances of breach [in the last few months] from the plant and both times, the rainfall recorded was 5 cm and 6.75 cm.” But the farmers insist it was not just rainwater, but “chemical water” that entered their fields from these ponds that overflowed. The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) issued a show-cause notice to TEPL in May 2026. It flagged the TDS (total dissolved solids) range of 1,916 milligrams per litre (mg/L) to 2,450 mg/L (against the norm of under 500 ppm or not above 1,000 ppm for percolation ponds) in the water sample collected from the rainwater pond. It also flagged BOD, or Biological Oxygen Demand (dissolved oxygen needed for breakdown of organic matter), in the range of 12 mg/L to 78 mg/L and COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand indicating contamination) in the range of 48 mg/L to 160 mg/L — both values significantly exceeding permissible limits of under 30 mg/L. The TDS range was ascertained from samples collected on three occasions at three different points between December and May. Off to a promising start It was in 2021 that TEPL chose Nagamangalam, near Hosur, to set up its iPhone component manufacturing unit. The move was seen as a big win for Tamil Nadu’s industrial portfolio and Hosur’s manufacturing ecosystem that was diversifying into electronics. The facility expanded with operations beginning at the Phase II plant last November. Farmers had rejoiced at the arrival of a “good corporate company” in their midst. “They say Tata is a good company. If they are giving jobs to so many people, they will only do good, we thought,” says Pushparaj, who now leads the farmers’ protests against the alleged effluent discharge.
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