TANK BASED WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT

By Er. N. Venkatesan poster: ابن Introduction In 1970s, watershed development had no special significance for the development community in India. Some of the projects that became success stories and household names, like Sukhomajri and Ralegon Sidhi,were already underway, but received very little attention. However,the situation changed radically by the end of the 1980s. The major examples of watershed development taken up earlier had started to leave their mark on the development community. Sukhomajri and Ralegon Sidhi were now well known examples of successful watershed development efforts. As a result, during the 1980s, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) initiated some 42 ‘model watersheds’ all over the country (under the Operation Research Programme). The concept of integrated watershed development, which began with the experimentation of Sukhomajri and Ralegon Sidhi and the Operation Research Projects of ICAR in the 1980s, was first institutionalized in the form of the National Watershed Development Programme for Rainfed Areas (NWDPRA) in 1990 with an allocation of Rs.133,800 million in the 8th Five Year Plan. Following the Hanumantha Rao Committee’s review in 1994and the formulation of ‘Common Guideline’, the period 1995-2001 saw the implementation of the ‘first generation’ project phase under the Revised Guidelines of 2001 with support from the Government of India as well as many bilateral agencies. Watershed development was thus increasingly seen as the Linchpin of rural development in dryland areas; as something that would tie together and ground the rural development effort. Notable examples of watershed development seemed to offer a way out of stagnation and degradation for all those areas that that development seemed to have bypassed,because it was precisely in those kinds of areas that watershed development had left its mark – the drylands, the wastelands, the degraded commons and the semi-arid and arid regions perpetually under the shadow of drought. Tank based Watershed Development According to the minor irrigation census conducted during 1986-87, Tamil Nadu had over 39000 minor irrigation tanks using surface water. These small-scale surface irrigation works are widespread and serve extensive areas. Tanks, which are relatively small and having shallow storages, constitute about athird of all minor irrigation in use. In three districts of Tamil Nadu (Pudukottai, Sivagangai and Ramanathapuram) tanks are the dominant irrigation sources accounting for over 80 per cent of the total irrigated area. In the State, the tanks account for over 26 per cent of the irrigated area. Being small storages, tanks have relatively small ayacut and on an average, it is 22 hectares. The challenge in the tankfed areas is sustainable agriculture and conservation and development of these small-scale water bodies. However, in Tank intensive watersheds, no new storage structure will be introduced in their catchment areas. The major stakeholders from the Government side in the tank and pond management are the Water Resources Organisationof Public Works Department and the Panchayat Unions. There are various other departments involved in tank management like, Forest, Agriculture, Agricultural Engineering, Fisheries, etc. Though the beneficiaries would be major stakeholders, all the people of the village benefiting from the water bodies would also be the other stakeholders. Measures for Tank based Watershed Development Conservation, development/ rehabilitation and sustainable management of natural resources like tanks, ponds, feeder channels and other water bodies like springs and streams with the full involvement of the people Vegetation improvement in the tank areas and greening the villages Community managed operation and maintenance of the tanks and ponds for effective water management including conjunctive use of water through community wells and equitable distribution of water through Water Users’ Association. Usufructory rights of the water bodies to the poor and landless SHGs Soil and in-situ moisture conservation measures like trenching, check dams, etc Promoting tank based livelihoods People participatory Approach: DHAN Foundation’s Experience DHAN Foundation has been implementing people participatory tank development program since 1992 in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Pondicherry. Tanks are the lifeline for rainfed agriculture in most of the districts in the southern states. Tanks are the mini watersheds. The Programme organises people around the resources and promote people’s institutions at different levels i.e. Tank Farmers Association and Dryland Farmers Association, Watershed Association/Cluster level association, sub-basin or basin level association/Farmers Federation. In all the project areas the program put efforts to enlist people’s participation. The experiences and learnings are as follows: Opportunity for Participation Success of any participatory programme depends on the opportunity available for different actors to participate in the programme right from the project planning. The programme provides adequate space for individual and for community as a whole to participate in the programme. The programme organises village level meeting and which assures the participation. To ensure active participation the programme put maximum efforts in the first village meeting onwards. Depending upon the social setup in the village the team follows any one or combination of efforts to ensure attendance in the meeting. They include organising meeting through village committee, through Caste Association, through other villagers and through house-to-house request. The way we organise the first meeting laid foundation for participation. DHAN foundation believes in participatory approach throughout the project period starting from delineationof watershed, baseline creation to completion of the work and post project sustainability. During each stage, based on the people’s suggestion through the participatory monitoring and evaluation, the new things have been added in the implementation and management of the systems to sustain the initiatives. The DHAN foundation presently implementing 45 watersheds under NWDPRA, 3 watersheds under NABARD and 15 more watersheds under DPAP and 10 more watersheds under ITC (Private Public partnership programme with ITC at Sivaganga district). In all these watersheds the participatory monitoring and evaluation process is followed in all the stages of the project implementation. By this process we could able to identify the right kind of the beneficiaries for interventions, the right kindof the intervention under each component of the watershedactivities. The ownership of the community by way of contribution and involving in the implementation have been realized which led to sustaining the initiative for future maintenance of the structures created. Resolving Conflicts Conflict is a natural phenomenon in any system. It is a struggle between incompatible and opposing needs,wishes, ideas, interests or people. In any participatory project, conflict is inevitable. The unresolvedconflicts from the past, exclusion of afew stakeholders, encroachers, deliberate misuse of common resources, infringement on traditional rights, inequity among different stakeholder groups, individualism etc hampers the participation. In our cases the characteristics of the conflict are as follows Conflicts arise from the emotional issues Conflicts arise over the ownership, Control and use of the resources. E.g. Encroachers and illegal water users. Conflicts are latent for long periods of time if the parties have no chance to have a confrontation. E.g. Novillage meetings Conflicts around common resources like tanks and ponds severely affect the status of the poor because it closely associated with the survival of the poor. Eg. Drinking water. The team has adopted the following steps to resolve and manage the conflicts. Wherever differences of opinion among the members towards village common work are found out, the team acknowledges that there exist a conflict and works towards resolving it. Patiently hearing the different points of view within and outside the village Together with the villagers the team explores ways to resolve the conflicts. Jointly evolve asolution by consensus. Because of the strategy of conflict resolution through the process monitoring in all the watersheds implemented by the DHAN foundation, many conflicts have been identified and resolved by the community themselves within the watersheds. The examples of such conflicts were: Encroachments in the water bodies at many places have been evicted with the support of revenue officials Water sharing issues in the water bodies like tanks at many places have been resolved amicably Issues related to village events like temple festivals sharing the common lands for collective action etc have been resolved Many places the individual family level issues related to sharing the resources have been amicably settled down At the time implementation the issues like occupying the sites for soil conservation works, fixing the rates for the implementing civil works, and related issues have been resolved Our approach in the conflicts will create a healthy working relationship among the villagers. New rules are brought out and thereby new management regimes are created for village administration and common resource management. In many cases asecond line of leadership emerges and neutralise the existing power equations from the village. From DHAN foundation’s experiences, mobilising people’s contributionis an effective strategy for building the stake of the community and it would lead to real ownership of the community on the assets created as common property resources. By this way we have ensured the 25 percent contributionin all the watershed development works through the proper monitoring and evaluation throughout the process of implementation. Because of this 25 percent contributionconcept, the community could able to do more work per available amount by way of participatory implementation by supervisingthe works critically. And at the same time they also deposited the 5 to 10 percent money in the watershed development account opened specifically for future maintenance. By this way each watershedhave Rs. 1.5 Lakh on an average as corpus fund for future maintenance after the project period. Contribution mobilisation Contribution is compulsory for areal participation. People should contribute minimum 25 per cent of the project cost either through labour or kind or cash or combination of any two or three. The compulsory contribution builds people’s stake in the project. It also makes the program more accountable to the people. In our programme, contribution after programme implementation in maintenance of tank complex systems could be seen in many places every year, which implies people ownership in order to maximise the benefits. Project Implementation All the activities of the program are implemented only through the people’s organisations. The program funds including the Grant from the Government are spent by the people’s organisation. The project personnel in no way get involved in handling funds. They never engage contractors to do any project activities. DHAN Foundation executives facilitate the implementation process by way of free techno-managerial inputs; training local people on supervising the work vis-à-vis monitor the progress. Thus the responsibility of leaders reflects in cost effective implementation with quality. It also builds people stake in the project. Process Review The interaction within, between and among the project personnel and people is systematically reviewed then and there. This will help the project to ensure maximum level of participation. If any changes are needed in the implementation, they are carried out immediately. It helped the project to ensure member consensus throughout the project. Integration of Privately owned Resources and Common Resources: Common resources development is given maximum possible attention it the program. The Program always maintains a balance between the privately owned and common resources development. The fund allocation to common resources development and benefits sharing from common resources are systematically worked out by involving the people. Basin approach Watershed is a part of the river basin. Watershed development program should not be implemented in isolation or based on other man-made parameters. The river basins will be considered as a broader areafor expansion of the program on a limited time dimension say within 10 years. While doing so, the revenue boundaries, state boundaries should not become bottleneck. The way forward and recommendations Based on our experiences of implementing various watershed programmes during last 10 more years, we learned many things from the community through their participation and implementation and we propose the following model of watershed programme implementation as to ensure the sustainable development of the natural resources by the community as narrated here: 1. Each Micro Watershed would have Two Phases of Project Life Duration namely 5 years under Phase –I and 3 years under Phase –II. 2. The Phase I could be further emphasized with specific focus as mentioned below 1st Year : Establising Memorundum of Cooperation with NGOs by Tamil Nadu Watershed Development Agency (TAWDEVA) and District Water Management Agency (DWMA), Community Preparedness, Planning and Proposal Submission, Sanctioning Process, Orientation towards VALAM and Entry Point Programmes, Identifying Action Research Areas. 2nd Year : Identification of Physical Works for entire watershed, Issues Mapping, Resolving Issues, Technical Estimates Preparation,Validation, Base Line Data Development with Impact Monitoring Indicators, Capacity Building of Three Streams, Action Research Design, Sharing and Approval 3rd Year : Physical Work Implementation and Agricultural Livelihood Development Interventions, Need Assessment and Skill Building for Community Enterprise Initiation, Undertaking ActionResearch 4th Year : Interim Evaluation, Value Addition for improvement of Physical work implementation and Livelihood Interventions, Capacity Building, Continuing Action Research 5th Year : Project Consolidation, Final Evaluation (Social, Physical and Economical),Results of Action Research The membership of Watershed Association should be on House Hold Basis wherein both Gender enrolls and Gender Action Planshould be derived for Agricultural and Non farm Livelihoods Each watershed would be implemented through Watershed Association and watersheds would be selected on Contiguous basis in a Sub-basin level in order to achieve area based development and realize the impact of massive investment for broader area. In our proposal 19 districts and 11 basins and more than 50 Sub-basins would be benefited. The investment rationale for watershed programme as this proposes Watershed Plus would be Rs.12000 per ha during the first phase, of which the Government Share would be Rs. 8000 per ha and the people contribution through Cash, Kind, Labour and Loan would be Rs.4000 per ha for each micro watershed. PFA instead of PIA: Since the functional groups promoted locally (i.e.,) Watershed Associations comprising User Groups and SHGs are going to implement the programme, the line departments or the NGOs will be the facilitating agencies only. In this context, the phrase “Programme Implementing Agency (PIA) now used in the watershed development documents is a misnomer and it needs to be changed as Programme FacilitatingAgency (PFA). Significance of NGOs in watershed development programmes: The watershed development programme is more of people oriented than the technology oriented. The policy of Govt. of India through its WARASA (JAN SAHBHAGITA) document also clearly brings out the people’s participation to the centre-stage in implementing watershed development projects. So,the pre-requisite for the success of any watershed programme will be “enabling the people”in planning, implementing and maintaining the development works in their watersheds. As is well known, the Govt. system is efficient in Technology and accounting, where as NGO system is good in organizing and inspiring the people with commitment for social service. So, utilising the services of NGO’s whichhave suitable technical personnel intheir pay roles as PFA also can yield the expected results of watershed development. On this score, at present a few NGOs are involved in the implementation of watershed development works through people’s participation. But, in the recent past, the NGO population has increased much with multi-various objectives stated for each one of them. So there is a need for fixing criteria for selecting the reputed and suitable NGOs as PFAs for watershed development. Such amodel criteria is furnished below.