Master of Science - ETD | Electronic Theses and Dissertations of ...

VI. SUMMARY AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Water is the life-blood of the environment, without water no living being can survive,
water plays an unique role in development of all sectors in any economy of every country.
Water is used for power generation, waste disposal, transportation, recreation, agriculture and
other various purposes but gross misuse of water resources causes widespread degradation
of soil and disrupts the supply of potable water, and generates massive economic losses.
More than 200 million people would live under conditions of high water stress by the year
2050, according to the UNEP reports, which warns that water could prove to be limiting factor
for development in a number of regions in the world. About 1/5 th of the world’s population,
lack of access to safe drinking water and with the present consumption patterns. Two out of
three persons on the earth would live in the water stressed conditions by 2025.
Around 1/3 rd of the world’s population now living in countries with moderate to high
water stress-where water consumption is more than 10 per cent of renewable fresh water
supply, said the GEO (Global Environment Outlook) 2000, the UNEPs millennium report. The
present decade in India is characterized by the damage caused by scarcity of rainfall on one
hand and flash floods due to heavy rainfall on the other. Since ours is monsoonic country
where the rainfall is erratic, uneven and failure occurs at least once in 3 or 4 years, there is a
need to take up comprehensive conservation and harvesting of rainwater, by the farmers who
have practicing farming under rainfed situations, for the rest of the years. In order to mitigate
water scarcity during critical stages of crop production the rain water harvesting structure on
watershed basis viz., farm ponds would help in taking supplementary or protective irrigation.
Comprehensive research studies that focus on watershed programmes, particularly
rain water harvesting structures viz., farm- ponds are few and far between. With this in view,
the present study was under taken with the below mentioned objectives and the results
obtained from economic evaluation of farm ponds would help in learning and drawing policy
guidelines for the future investments planned.
The present study was taken up in the Dharwad and Kalaghatagi taluks of Dharwad
district of Karnataka state with the following specific objectives.
To identify the extent of the use of Rain Water Harvesting Structures (RWHS) in the study
area
To study the cost involved in construction of various RWHS
To examine the impact of farm-ponds on cropping pattern, productivity, employment and
income of the farmers
To examine the feasibility of investment in farm-ponds
6.1 Sampling and data
The present study was purposively undertaken in the rainfed areas of Dharwad and
Kalaghatagi taluks at Dharwad district of Karnataka, where the World Bank assisted Sujala
Watershed is under operation.
For the present study, Managundi MWS in Managundi SWS and Tumari-koppa MWS
in Galagi SWS were selected respectively, from Dharwad and Kalaghatagi taluks.
From the selected two MWS 25 per cent of the farmers were randomly selected from each
MWS based on the availability of farm ponds located on their fields to make a sample size of
45 and for comparison purpose another sample of 45 farmers who do not possess farm
ponds i.e. without farm-pond were randomly interviewed and the data pertaining agriculture
year 2003-04 was collected using pre-tested interview schedules.
The technique of tabular presentation including averages and percentages were
adopted in respect to compute socio-economic features of sample farmers, cropping pattern,
input usage, cropping intensity, cost and returns using cost concepts etc. and the financial
feasibility criteria was used to evaluate the financial feasibility of farm ponds.
6.2 Major findings of the study
A brief summary of findings of the study is presented below.
The sample farmers in with and without farm-pond area are almost same with respect
to age and family type (average of 53.44 and 50.11 respectively) while education status was
comparatively higher in with farm-pond (73.33%) area over without farm-pond (53.33%) area.