(Icon-Farm, February 12-16, 2008, p. 119)
Rainfed areas in India account for more than two-thirds of the agricultural land. The post-Independence agricultural development efforts generally overlooked these areas. But the past decade witnessed a qualitative and quantitative change in rainfed areas through various integrated intensive development programs and community participation. The main aim of the integrated watershed approach was to improve livelihood security in rainfed areas through sustainable agricultural transformation. The past performance of watershed development programs has been mixed, both satisfactory as well as unsatisfactory. But result from a meta analysis comprising 310 watersheds revealed that the mean benefit-cost ratio of watershed. program in the country was quite modest at 2.14. The average internal rate of return was 22%, which is comparable with many rural development programs. The watershed programs generated employment opportunities, augmented irrigated area and cropping intensity and conserved soils and water resources. The best performance of watershed programs was found in regions with a rainfall ranging between 700 and 1000 mm, jointly implemented by state and cemral govemments, targeted in low and medium income regions, and with effective people’s participation. Realizing the full potential of watershed programs is subject to a favourable combination of multiple factors, including access to markets, technology and equitable access to the conserved water and other economic goods and services generating tangible benefits for the poor. Recurrent evaluation for the impact of investment made in thes~ programs, developing mechanisms for enhancing equity in sharing benefits and costs between the stakeholders and innovative institutions to strengthen production and marketing and reliable flow of information in the watershed areas need to be explored. The major challenge lies in developing appropriateinstitutional mechanismsand dissemination strategies to. scale up successful approaches that encourage collective action and generate substantial socio-economic and environmental benefits to the community. This would go a long way to realize the 11th Plan vision of inclusive growth that will bring about a faster reduction in poverty and help bridge the divides. Scaling up of successful approaches in watershed would be an important step in realizing the 11th Plan vision and moving towards ‘Bharat Nirman’.
