Livelihood Augmentation in Rainfed Areas - Development Support ...

developing these areas would be about Rs 1,36,042 crores (Planning Commission,
2002).
Creating a long-term vision
Given the nature of the problem outlined above, it is clear that the carrying capacities
of rainfed areas will have to increase dramatically in the years to come. This means
that the same unit of land will have to, perforce, support larger populations year after
year. Failure to do so would lead to migration and enlargement of urban slums, and
increase in food scarcity.
This calls for a vision over a long time-frame that will spell out the graduated steps
by which rainfed areas will continue to improve productivity in ways that support the
rapidly expanding population. The present compilation of knowledge is a modest
attempt to move towards such a vision. In the next section, we describe briefly some of
the approaches to LA that have been tried, tested and found effective in rainfed areas.
These approaches, which are not mutually exclusive, can be used in conjunction with
each other. They serve as the basis of the conceptual framework for the handbook.
Augmenting Livelihoods in Rainfed Areas: Various
Approaches
The watershed development approach
The experience of watershed development has shown the way for augmenting the
natural resource base in rainfed regions, particularly the undulating areas with semiarid
and arid climates. Innovative experiments of the 80s were used as inputs for
scaling up watershed development in various states through governmental and bilateral
funding. A wealth of knowledge is available with various developmental agencies
in participatory processes and systems that have proved effective in implementing
watershed projects.
Various ministries/departments of the Government of India and the state governments
have implemented different schemes to improve the infrastructure for soil and water
conservation: storage of surface water through check-dams, tanks, ponds, etc.; and
storage of groundwater through recharge of wells, gabion structures, sub-surface
dams, percolation tanks, etc. Table 1.2 shows the coverage and expenditure in some
of the important schemes of past and present.
The Untapped Potential of Rainfed Areas
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