Watershed Development Projects In India: An Evaluation

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Research Report 127

by John Kerr, in collaboration with Ganesh Pangare and Vasudha Lokur Pangare

2002

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ABOUT THIS REPORT

The Green Revolution that transformed irrigated agriculture elsewhere in India had little effect in the rainfed, semi-arid regions. Agricultural productivity remained low, natural resources were degrading, and the people were poor. In the 1980s and 1990s, planners turned to watershed management to develop rainfed agriculture while conserving natural resources. By the late 1990s, India was spending US$500 million a year on watershed development projects. Strategies ranged from the purely technical to those that emphasized social organization. Little systematic analysis exists, however, on the success of the different approaches.

This study, based on a survey of 86 villages in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra states, attempts to fill that information gap by evaluating the projects' relative success in raising agricultural productivity, improving natural resource management, and reducing poverty. In looking at the question of what approaches enable a project to succeed, it uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis to compare project and nonproject villages before and after the projects were implemented. The authors find that projects involving the villagers in planning and decisionmaking performed better than their technocratic, top-down counterparts, but projects that combined participation with sound technical input performed best of all. All projects faced difficulties in ensuring that poor people shared the benefits of watershed development.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John Kerr, an agricultural economist, currently is an assistant professor in the Department of Resource Development, Michigan State University. He earned his PhD from the Food Research Institute at Stanford University in 1990. From 1990 through 1994 he worked for Winrock International and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad, India, where he conducted research on rural natural resource management. From 1995 to 1999 he worked for IFPRI, partly as a research fellow and partly as a consultant.

Ganesh Pangare is CEO of the Indian Network on Participatory Irrigation Management,New Delhi. He was a member of the Working Group on Watershed Development, Rainfed Agriculture, and Natural Resource Management, set up by the Planning Commission to prepare for India's tenth Five Year Plan.

Vasudha Pangare is executive director of the World Water Institute in Pune, India. She also heads Oikos Consultants and is a member of the steering committee of the Gender and Water Alliance, which is an associated program of the Global Water Partnership.

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The abstract and report are available for download in PDF format as an entire document or by chapter.

Abstract

(PDF 68K)

Full Report

(PDF 424K)

Table of Contents, Tables, Figures, Foreword, Acknowledgements, and Summary
(PDF 91K)
Chapter 1: Introduction
(PDF 91K)
Chapter 2: Approaches to Watershed Development in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh
(PDF 142K)
Chapter 3: Data
(PDF 140K)
Chapter 4: Methods
(PDF 93K)
Chapter 5: How Projects Choose Where to Operate
(PDF 129K)
Chapter 6: Natural Resource Management and Productivity on Uncultivated Lands
(PDF 161K)
Chapter 7: Promoting Irrigation Development
(PDF 90K)
Chapter 8: Natural Resource Management and Productivity of Rainfed Agricultural Land
(PDF 156K)
Chapter 9: Conclusions
(PDF 128K)
Glossary
(PDF 54K)
References
(PDF 81K)

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