Issue for October - December 2011 - National Institute of Rural ...

Organisational Structure Involving Community For Effective Watershed Development 423Evaluation of watersheds implementedsubsequent to the guidelines revealedsignificant and positive impacts such as markedimprovement in the access to drinking water,increase in the area under cultivation and yieldincreases in crops, improved fodder yields andrise in milk yield, reduction in the migration oflabour and rise in groundwater levels andmitigation of drought (Hanumantha Rao, 2000).However, a critical review of the watershedprogrammes has shown that participatoryapproach has still not been institutionalisedon a large scale. According to Shah (1998), theperformance of watershed developed byGovernment Organisations (GOs) was verygood in technical aspects while it was weak inenticing community participation andconverse was true with respect to Non-Government Organisations (NGOs). Post-Project sustainability was a serious concern inmany watersheds due to poor deliverymechanisms because of weak institutional setupat community level (Sanghi, 2009).To provide additional strength to theprogramme, Government of India (GoI) hasmodified its guidelines during 2000 byincorporating most of the activities foundsuccessful in achieving sustainability (Turtonet, al 1998; Anonymous, 2000). In spite of suchguidelines, no evidence is forthcoming toindicate a specific approach that becomesbroadly applicable to all situations forachieving sustainability. Hence, the existingapproaches were reviewed by assessing theimpacts in respect of different issues and alsoexamining the constraints that are affectingsustainability so as to develop an appropriateorganisational arrangement that would beeffective in implementing the watershedmanagement programmes by the people soas to restore ecological balance.Study AreaThe present study was undertaken byadopting “before and after” situation in threewatersheds developed by different agenciesin Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh to assessthe appropriateness of institutionalarrangement for realising the desired goalsenvisaged. As the main objective of the studywas to identify the differences in performanceand impact of watershed development underdifferent organisational arrangements, it wasnecessary to select watersheds under similaragro-climatic conditions. Accordingly, threewatersheds namely (a) S. Rangapuram,implemented by Non-GovernmentOrganisation (NGO) under the new guidelinesduring 1995-99 with DPAP funds; (b) GundalaWatershed developed by District RuralDevelopment Agency (DRDA) beingGovernment Organisation (GO) with the helpof multi-disciplinary team during the period1991-94; and (c) Chinnatekuru watershedmanaged by a Research Organisation (RO) withfunds from DRDA using the services of LineDepartments during the period 1983-90 wereselected. The area of the watersheds rangedfrom 816 ha at S. Rangapuram, 1120 ha atChinnatekuru to 8577 ha in case of GundalaWatershed.The watersheds are located at an altituderanging from 300 to 500 Mts and between 77-58 0 E Longitude and 15-15 0 N Latitude. All thewatersheds have undulating terrain withmultiple slopes. The slopes range from 0.5 to8 per cent in case of arable lands and 5 to 33per cent in case of hillocks.The climate is aridto dry, semi-arid in all the watersheds withaverage annual rainfall being 468 mmoccurring over 41 days at S.Rangapuram, 487mm received in 39 days at Gundala and 654mm over 44 rainy days at Chinnatekuru. Cropfailures are common in all the watersheds dueto either failure of rainfall or its ill-distribution.The soils in the watershed are red sandyloams and are characterised by shallow depthdue to heavy erosion in the past. However, invalleys one will encounter red clay loam soilsindicating accumulation of clay through runoffJournal of Rural Development, Vol. 30, No. 4, October - December : 2011