Socio-Economic Transformation Model on People’s Involvement in Watershed

The activity in a watershed is an entity for transformation. The socio-economic transformation through watershed mobilization in a developing country like India is attained with appropriate planning and implementation of objectives and alternatives. In this paper, an analytical model is presented to Identify socio-economic transformation while people participation in watershed activities is encouraged for sustainable development. The people’s choices and their involvement in different activities during project implementation should be given due weightage. A Multi-Objective Decision Matrix will play an important role in planning process and decision-making. The matrix for socio-economic rejuvenation is combined with technical evaluations and objective weights using techniques of additive weighting to obtain an overall evaluation index (I) for each alternative. Each objective weight is multiplied by an appropriate relative value for an alternative. The combinations are summed in the vertical direction giving the final score (index) for each alternative. The value of this index (I) for an alternative depends on the designated scale of values. The highest scores (indices) will determine the final alternatives. Stated mathematically, the objective function to be maximized is: where j varies from 1 to m, n = number of objectives, m = number of alternatives; Wi = weight of importance the citizen places on objective i (dimensionless), Vij =relative value of alternative j in fulfilling objective i. The paper discusses such a formulation based on field observation of some case studies in the State of Assam, India. For a number of choices, the best one is selected when the weightage value of the model matrix is the highest.