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V SUNDARAM

        What is the national significance of the WATERSHED

        DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME? The Parthasarathy Committee gives the answer in these words: 'With impressive macro-economic rates of growth and a booming stock market, India is one of the most exciting economies in the world today. India has reportedly displaced the United States as the second most attractive destination for foreign direct investment in the world after China. This spectacular overall performance, however, hides one dark spot that the people of India exposed through Verdict 2004. The benefits of this growth have not been evenly distributed. Large parts of India do not find a place on the development map of the country'.

        The phenomenon of regional imbalance in India's development finds official recognition in the recent Planning Commission Report 2005 that has developed 'a list of 170 most backward districts including 55 extremist violence affected districts'.

        The Parthasarathy Committee rightly and eloquently advocates the view that an increased thrust to rain-fed areas / most backward districts through greater emphasis on a revised Watershed Programme holds the key to meeting this challenge.

        Watershed Programmes in India are relatively new. After Independence, our focus was on multi-purpose reservoirs for providing irrigation and generating hydro-electricity. However, a Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Soil Conservation Work in the Catchments of River Valley Projects (RVP) was launched by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1962 - 63 to stabilize the catchments of reservoirs and to control the siltation. Then after a gap of nearly 17 years, Government of India woke up from its deep slumber when the Ministry of Agriculture started a scheme of Integrated Watershed Management in the Catchments of Flood Prone Rivers (FPR) in 1980 - 81. The Ministry of Agriculture launched a scheme for propagation of water harvesting / conservation technology in 19 identified locations in rain-fed areas in 1982 - 83. Later in October 1984, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) adopted this approach in 22 other locations in rain-fed areas. In all these 41 model Watersheds, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) was also involved to provide research and technology support. These Operation Research Projects were meant to develop 'Model Watersheds' in different agro-climatic zones of the country.

        Based on experience gained from these programmes, Government of India launched the National Watershed Development Programme of Rain fed Areas (NWDPRA) in 1990, covering 99 districts in 16 States. Simultaneously, starting from 1972 - 73, conservation work was being carried out in the Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP) which had been launched by MoRD. Later in 1977 - 78, the MoRD also introduced a special programme called Desert Development Programme (DDP). It was a special programme for hot desert areas of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana and cold desert areas of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The next important stage in the evolution of Watershed Programme was the appointment of a Technical Committee under the Chairmanship of Professor C H Hanumantha Rao in 1994. This Committee was directed to appraise the impact of the work done under Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP) and Desert Development Programme (DDP). The Hanumantha Rao Committee came to the following conclusion: 'The programmes have been implemented in a fragmented manner by different departments through rigid guidelines without any well-designed plans prepared on Watershed basis by involving the inhabitants. Except in a few places, in most of the programme areas the achievements have been dismal. Ecological degradation has been proceeding unabated in these areas with reduced forest covers, reducing water table and a shortage of drinking water, fuel and fodder'.

        The Watershed projects undertaken by MoRD from 1994 to 2001 followed the Hanumantha Rao Committee Common Guidelines of 1994. The Ministry of Agriculture revised its guidelines for National Watershed Development Programme for Rain-fed Areas (NWDPRA) in 2000 in order to make this programme 'more participatory, sustainable and equitable'. These revised guidelines became known as WARASA-JAN SAHABHAGITA Guidelines. In 2001, MoRD revised the Hanumantah Rao Committee guidelines of 1994 and in April 2003 modified and reissued them under the name of 'Guidelines for Hariyali'. The Watershed Programme has become the Centre-piece and focal point of rural development in India. The Ministry of Environment and Forest as well as bilateral funding agencies are also involved in implementation of Watershed Programmes in India.

        Parthasarathy Committee has made a detailed and critical evaluation of all the Watershed Programmes in India and come out with path defining proposals and recommendations for making these programmes more effective and more useful for raising the living standards of people below the poverty line in all the dry pockets and rain fed areas of India. I would summarise the main and operational recommendations of this committee:

        1. Watershed developments in India has been one-sidedly preoccupied with supply augmentation. Little attention has been paid to the end uses of rain water. The Committee has observed, 'Watershed Development in India has failed to break with the dominant development paradigms of the 20th century, all of which are characterized by supply-side solutions. These solutions are caught in the infinite regress of forever trying to catch up with ever expanding demand'.

        2. There are drastic physical limits to further expansion of surface and ground water irrigation through big dams and tube wells. This terrible situation makes it absolutely imperative for adopting a different strategy for India's dry lands.

        3. Such a strategy cannot but recognise the location-specific characteristics of different parts of India and it should be sensitive to the limits set by the eco-system. This strategy, according to the Parthasarathy Committee, constitutes the broad bedrock of Watershed Development.

        4. The Committee has provided solid evidence to show that rain-fed parts of Indian agriculture contain the greatest unutilized potential for growth. The committee has also brilliantly concluded that the productivity of dry land agriculture needs to be developed on a priority basis if food security demands of the year 2020 are to have a realistic chance of being met. In this context, I cannot help observing that Government of India in the Ministry of Agriculture are only committed to a suicidal policy of what I call MBPF-Management By Perspective/Planned Famines in the next decade!

        5. The committee is of the view that the growth elasticity of poverty (the response of poverty to growth) would be the highest if growth initiatives were to be focused on these neglected dry and desert regions of India.

        6. The most critical weakness of Watershed Development Programmes in India is that they operate almost as if ground water does not exist. It enters as only a something to be recharged and replenished. It plays almost no role in Watershed planning. Watershed planners forget that just as there is a surface water catchment, there also exists a ground water catchment. We cannot have the policy of 'Anarchy Plus One Constable' in this vital area of water planning and water management.

        7. There has to be clear prioritization of objectives in each watershed—drinking water and protective irrigation along with fodder and fuel must come first. In spite of its importance for the poor, watershed programmes in India have not systematically integrated livestock management as one of the central interventions.

        8. Water resource development in India has stood condemned between the fundamentalism of the irrigation engineers on the one hand and the cussed orthodoxy of soil and water conservation engineers on the other. The resultant casualty has been the treatment of catchment areas and integrated water development.

        9. Happily, the Committee has not overlooked or set aside the inevitable and fundamental clash between the exigencies of conservation and ecological balance on the one hand and the pressing and undeniable needs of the poor people in each watershed on the other.

        10. The Committee has rightly focused on issues of participation, transparency and equity. Informed participation ought to be the overriding goal. The principle of equity must extend to conflict resolution, beneficiary selection, benefit sharing etc. Special provisions must be made for the landless and the Dalits.

        11. A great deal of work has been done by ICRISAT and many centres belonging to the network of Agricultural Universities in all parts of India and also by field research stations of the ICAR and IARI. The agronomic and technical packages developed by these agricultural scientists are in a crying need of field testing and field trials.

        12. At the current level of outlay, it would take 75 years for watershed treatment to be completed. In order to complete this task, the Government needs to allocate Rupees 10,000 crores per annum every year for the next 15 years.

        13. The Committee has recommended the creation of a National Authority for Sustainable Development of Rain-fed Areas (NASDORA) as a quasi-independent authority to manage the entire primarily Central Government funded watershed programme in India.

        The Parthasarathy Committee graphically brings out the fact that the laws of nature in each watershed are just but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. Nature is avariciously frugal: in matter, it allows no atom to elude its grasp: in mind, no thought or feeling to perish. It gathers up the fragments that nothing be lost. Nature and wisdom always say the same. Nature is too thin a screen: the glory of the ONE breaks in everywhere. No wonder Bacon said that nature can be commanded only by obeying her. This can be done only by demanding less for ourselves to live within the earth's income instead of scattering the capital the earth took billions of years to bring together. This fundamental fact should underpin every element and aspect of watershed development programme in India.

        With my own varied experience in the field of administration of rural development, minor and major irrigation programmes in Tamil Nadu, I would strongly advice the Government of India to immediately constitute a High Level Inter-Ministerial Implementation and Co-ordination Committee to take immediate action on a war-footing to implement all the major recommendations of the Parthasarathy Committee. In my view, it would be in the larger public interest to involve Shri.Parthasarathy in the supreme task of overseeing the implementation of this vital programme at the apex advisory level.