Addressing Issues, Concerns and Contradictions in Technical and Social Domain of Watershed Development

Abstract

Watershed development as a concept emerged from the work at village Sukhomajri in 1978 and passed through several stages of replication in the Shivalik region of five states of north India. It received overwhelming success when participatory approaches were followed. Substantial flow of visible benefits to resource poor communities and sustainable social institutions got established. But at places failures and sub-optimal performance were also encountered when the above stated aspects were ignored. The World Bank supported Integrated Watershed Development Project (Hills) gave a fillip to the programme by replicating the participatory development concept in the five states over a period of 12 years. The success stories and lessons learnt have been well documented but contradictions on several technical, economic and social issues including cost and benefit sharing persist. The new generation watershed projects can be better planned, designed and executed in case such issues are flagged and contradictions are deliberated and resolved. Some issues and concerns have been raised in this paper.

Continuance of funding support to improve productivity and poverty alleviation in the Shivaliks and a unified implementing agency is stressed. Integrating watershed research with development would be necessary to solve second generation problems. Some technical discrepancies leading to extra expenditure on sediment control structures in drainage line treatment are highlighted and appropriate solution suggested. Analysis of small and very small water harvesting dams made for water resources development suggest that smaller dams having catchment area between 70-100 ha are economically more viable than much smaller micro dams having catchment area less than 25 ha. An attempt has been made to flag issues and concern in social development like cost sharing, work through communities, status of gender and equity with special reference to experience gained in the Haryana Community Forestry Project funded by the European Commission.