TUCKED away in tehsil Ambajogai of
Beed district in Maharashtra, water
shortage forced the inhabitants of the
tiny village of Manganwadi to migrate
every year for six months to Pune, about
250 km away, to eke out one square
meat a day. "We would lock the whole
village and go," says Bhularao
Kundakar, a marginal farmer with a
mere 0.6 ha field. But all that is history
now. The mass exodus has met its end.
A micro-watershed development project, introduced in the village by an NGO,
the Marathwada Navnirman Lokayat
(Manavlok),,has totally changed the lives of Kundakar and his fellow villagers. "Nobody leaves the village today
to work outside, as we now produce
enough foodgrain and get not just one
but two crops a year," says Ganesh
Devekare, another villager.
A watershed is an area with an uniform drainage pattern. In other words,
the land area from which the water drains into a given section of a river is
the watershed, relative to that section of
the river. Depending on the length of
the section, it could be as large as the
entire Indo-Gangetic plain or as small as
a village. Selecting a watershed as a unit
assures the sustainable development of
the area by empowering people at the
local level to manage their own
resources.
The Maharashtra government
laun c*hed its Comprehensive Watershed
Development Programme (COWDEP) in
1983 for an integrated development of
the drought-prone areas of the state.
But a variety of reasons led to the
government's relative failure with the
programme and consequently, COWDEP
could not contain the heavy migration
of people to other towns and even to the
neighbouring states.
Ambajogai block in Beed, with a
hilly terrain and an annual rainfall of
only 630 mm, where 95 per cent farmers
produced just one crop a year, was the
ideal launching pad for the project. The
target was a three-tier water harvesting'
system, envisaged to double the current
percolation rate of about 15 per cent.
The highest point, which is most susceptible to erosion, is planted with trees.
Grass is grown to arrest further erosion.
The intermediate stretches house physical structures like contour bunds and
earthen stone bundings to obstruct free-
flowing rainwater. At the very bottom,
water harvesting devices like check
dams, overflows and farm ponds have
been constructed. The water accumulating structures, usually community wells,
complete the picture. The use of locally
available materials has brought down
the cost of the check dam by 40 per cent
when compared to the government project.
In Beed district, these micro'-watershed projects have effectively utilised
rainwater resulting in an increased yield
of kharif crops. About 8,000 ha in its
project area today boast of a hitherto
unraised second rabi crop. It has
successfully reclaimed about 1,000 ha
of wasteland too. "We can turn this
area into the food basket of
Marathwada, if every farmer adopts
these micro-watersheds," says Chintamani Kulkarni, sarpanch (village headperson) of Yelda village. Along with
higher crop yield, fuel and fodder
availability has also been taken care of.
The people of Beed have actively
participated in this movement through
the network of krishak panchayats
(farmers' fora). Any farmer, small or
marginal, can voluntarily join the
krishak panchayat in his village. The
panchayat elects its own office bearers
and fixes its own agenda, meeting at
least once a month. It undertakes the
responsibility for coordinating and
monitoring watershed development
and other programmes sponsored by
Manavlok.
The villagers have learned how to
manage these projects. "We know how
to measure total land required for the project, depth of the check dam,
its height, length of contour
bunds and also the amount and
direction of the flow of rainwater," beams Shrirang Bobade,
president, krishak panchayat, Bobewadi village.
"Regular monitoring of
these projects by Manavlok and
krishak panchayat members has
revealed that the rate of percolation has increased from 15 to 25
per cent, resulting in an
increased availability of water to
the fields," claims D S Lohia,
secretary, Manavlok.
But this was not sufficient
for achieving a higher yield
"Hence, krishak panchayats
decided to provide interest-free
loans to their members to purchase quality seed and fertiliser," says Balbhim Karhar,
president of the krishak panchayat in Year. Given for a
period of six months at the beginning of
each harvesting season, the loaning
scheme has reported a 100 per cent rate
of recovery. "Members are aware that it
is their own money and know that only
its timely return ensures the smooth
functioning of the panchayat," says
Govind Devgate, the panchayat's secretary.
Problem areas
But these projects are not an end in
themselves. "To achieve sustainable
development in the villages we need to
raise the incomes of the villagers, in particular that of the women," says Lohia.
Women organised through the Bhoomi
Kanya Mandal (BKM) carry out many
income generation activities to attain
self-sufficiency. In Kuranwadi village, a
group of 11 women are running a poultry farm for which Rs 22,000 was provided as an interest-free loan by
Manavlok in 1992. "Not only have we
returned the loan, we have also earned
an equal amount by selling 500 birds,"
says Premkala Kotlapure, president,
BKM.
Even though several problems like
those of the three FS (food, fuel and-fodder) have reduced the dependency of
people on the rain god, the people's
reliance on the NGO itself has not been
reduced. Although Lohia assures that
the organisation would gradually withdraw from the areas under the project as
they become self-dependent, the villages
are not yet ready to manage on their
own. Bhavthana, where Manavlok
started its activities in 1982, for
example, is far from achieving self-
dependency in the near future. "We do
need someone's support to initiate
watershed development. We cannot do
it ourselves," says Vishnu Jadav, president, krishak panchayat, Bhavthana.
Echoes Hariban Rathore, sarpanch,
Rajwadi village, "We still need
Manavlok for financial, technical and
logistic support." The locals need this
support for the routine maintenance of
projects too.
Fundamentally, it is the uninterrupted supply of money needed for the smooth functioning of the project that
has become the main reason for the
growing dependency of these rural folk
on the NGO. In the summer of 1995, a
watershed project in Sabla village was
developed. Aimed at irrigating about 20
ha, the project comprised a check dam,
farm land and an overflow, costing
about Rs 98,000. The villagers had to
pay just a token sum ranging from Rs 25
to Rs 250 per ha, depending on each
farmer's level of income. The labour for
the project was not voluntary but paid
for. The generous financial cushion
offered by the NGO makes even krishak
panchayats like the one in Bhavthana,
having Rs 25,000 in its kitty, unwilling
to take up a project on their own.
