Fighting drought, improving livelihood through rainwater harvesting: A learning enhancement exercise Winrock International India documents how community water harvesting systems/watershed programs as collective assets can help build a community’s resilience to tackling droughts in perpetually drought-prone regions of India.

Project brief

Policy recommendations

This project entitled "Learning Enhancement Exercise in Water Harvesting", was awarded to Winrock International India (WII) by The Ford Foundation. As part of the project study, WII reviewed four case interventions, two each in Gujarat and Rajasthan. In Gujarat, field visits were undertaken in work areas of two NGOs - Shree Kundla Gram Seva Mandal (SKTGSM) in Amreli district and SEWA in Banaskantha district. Similarly, in Rajasthan, WII made study visits to work areas of two NGOs - Seva Mandir in Udaipur and Pradan in Alwar. The findings of the review were shared in a one-day ‘Sharing and Reflections’ workshop on May 27, 2003, at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The participants included members from the four NGOs and subject experts from India. At the end of the workshop, a ‘List of Policy Recommendations’ was drawn on enhancing the impacts of watershed/water harvesting activities on rural livelihoods, in general, and drought proofing, in particular.

Policy recommendations

• Treated village commons (tanks, pasture land, etc) contribute more to drought proofing of the landless and marginalized. Watershed program should lay emphasis on developing village commons. However, scope will depend on ecological endowments.
• Under share cropping, clearly defined land rights (ownership and tenancy) help even the small farmers and landless to reap the benefits of a watershed program.
• Options for obtaining technical sanctions in watershed programs should be increased. Currently, it is granted by GOs (eg, panel of experts from outside GO - Gujarat).
• Covering watershed activities in the entire village helps equity in benefit sharing and promotes participation of the small and marginalized (in all the cases it was low Seva Mandir: 20%, SEWA: 25%).
• Standardized size of 500 ha is inappropriate for different ecological conditions. Different models of watershed are needed.
• Treatment of upstream degraded forest areas imperative for maximizing impact of watershed program. Need to simplify procedures for NGOs and CBOs.
• Water harvesting must be integrated with District Poverty Initiative Program and other poverty focused programs to attend to inherent inequity problems.
• Higher priority should be provided to food and fodder crops over cash crops; for cash crops, proper training and organization to deal with market and environmental risks should be organized.
• In areas where agriculture and animal husbandry are not primary sources of livelihood for landholders, the benefits of a watershed program become significant for the landless; special interventions for weaker sections may not be necessary.
• Supply of power in agriculture on "when required" basis "time and duration" is key to enhancing agricultural productivity and water use efficiency.
• People’s institutions imperative for success of watershed implementation as well as life after a watershed project
• People’s institutions play multiple functions. They:
• Manage equity
• Manage funds
• Absorb new technology
• Organize micro-enterprise
• Infuse democratic values and norms
• Impact social relations and structures
• Broadening of responsibilities can lead to a watershed committee graduating into a village development committee; post-watershed period should be planned in advance to avoid dormancy or slow death of local institutions.
• Registration procedures for cooperatives should be rationalized.
• Involvement of women depends on existing gender relations; if skewed, better to plan parallel interventions and integrate when capacity of women built up through their own institutions.
• Treatment of micro-watershed should be in contiguous areas so that subsequent federating of committees is possible. Watershed federations provide a number of services that individual committees cannot and help in the institutional sustainability process. Federations
• Can deal with inter-village conflicts
• Deal with markets and external forces
• Provide collective services, and
• Make possible formation of community-based post-harvest enterprises at the block level.

For more information, contact shashikant@winrockindia.org