(The contents of this paper emerged from a series of seminars with the PIDOW staff)

May 1986

1. A rapid survey of the area around Gulbarga answers the question why the project focused on Watersheds. Undulating lands, well-defined water catchment areas with individual water outlets merging together as the water rushes towards larger streams define the topography. We also find that in most of the mini-watersheds (especially those far away from main roads) not only is water a scarce and mismanaged resource but over-all degradation is a common feature. The watershed is degraded not only in terms of land and soils but as much in terms of people and their skills and institutions (social, political, credit, health and energy) - which together should form the basis of a self-reliant community.2. THE 'PARTICIPATION' IN PIDOW :When it was decided to call the project PIDOW, priority was given to Participation of the people. Initially the staff interpreted this as motivation and consequently organised village gatherings and melas which were addressed by prominent local speakers and staff who made efforts to raise the levels of interest and establish a rapport with the villagers. The next step was to organise small but concrete actions which provided opportunities for people to plan and work together (shramdaan to repair roads, desilt wells, etc.). But participation is much more. It calls for assisting the people to design and build up local institutions (functional, etc.) with appropriate systems to manage the resources of a Watershed. We have models for some of these functional institutions (sericulture societies, milk societies). Some of them can be integrated (when viable) with Apex institutions that cover large areas like Milk Societies into Milk Unions and Cooperatives into Apex Banks. A management model and an infrastructure exists for these functional institutions which other types of institutions do not enjoy. We surely do not have a model for an Apex organisation to manage a watershed nor even a model for appropriate functional institutions which are required to achieve the objective of over-all development of the community in a watershed. It is not enough, therefore, to motivate and organise the community to express feelings of enthusiasm for the proposed programmes : viable institutions managed by the people need to be developed. This immediately "imposes" certain restrictions on the size of the watershed where the programme is undertaken. 

The Watershed cannot be too large. Its size must depend on the "capacity" of the people and their institutions to manage the operations required (though this "capacity" in terms of skills, knowledge, and resources will, hopefully, increase as a result of PIDOW's intervention). The existing "area definitions" of a watershed as guiding norms are of little help. For example the PWD (Irrigation Department) describes the watershed in terms of river basins. The area extends over thousands of hectares which comprises the entire catchment area of a major river. Such an area concept cannot serve as the basis of PIDOW's choice of a watershed. It is too large to achieve the major objective of participation. The practice of the Maharajas and local rulers provides a useful example. They concentrated on minor basins and tanks which were administered by the village or panchayat. This is one reason why during exposure trips the PIDOW staff should visit areas where the people have developed their own institutions to manage a programme or absorbed management patterns which are appropriate (like that of a milk society). They should not visit only large Government managed programmes which are high in technology and expertise but have a management pattern too costly and elaborate to be adopted and managed by the people.

The Watershed cannot be too small either. If it is, then the programme will be largely symbolic in nature. The functional institutions will be too small to achieve economic viability and too weak to exert pressure, the area perhaps, too inadequate to plan for the major needs of energy, pasture and forestry. How large, therefore, should the watershed be? One can be allowed to hazard a guess at this stage at the cost of inviting criticism of being arbitrary. A watershed covering 600 to 800 acres with 80 to 100 farming families would be a possible start for PIDOW. (This estimate is also conditioned by the present strength and skills of the PIDOW staff and its involvement over the entire project area apart from its programme in the mini- watershed.) From participation flows another essential feature of watershed management

 DECENTRALISATION (1) . The watershed programmes must be planned and managed by local groups and coordinated at the watershed level. Unless these institutional demands of "decentralisation" are properly understood and fulfilled from the start, the project will take on features of the Government's IRDP and other Departmental programmes which are some of the basic causes of its failures. For example, a genuinely decentralised programme will be based on village groups, especially groups of people below the poverty line who are to benefit from the IRD programme. By "being based" we mean -

• efforts will be made to establish a functional group so that it runsaccording to certain rules and regulations.

• the choice of "beneficiaries" will be made by the group.

• the disbursement and utilisation of funds will be monitored by orthrough the group.

• the programmes will be undertaken not under theDepartment'spressure to achieve targets but according to the group's capacity toabsorb and manage such programmes.

3. THE INTEGRATION IN PIDOW :

One of the major bottlenecks in IRD programmes has been the lack of integration both at management levels and in the content of various programmes. For example agro-forestry or agro-horticulture programmes under IRDP are planned without analysing the relation of trees to a particular watershed need for soil stabilisation, for fuel, for fodder, for fertiliser, or for that matter for flowers - the last could form the basis of a very profitable apiculture programme especially if the trees flower between February and June when there is hardly any other honey source. Astra Oles (smokeless, fuel-efficient ovens) are installed to meet targets under area programmes (Block), without the staff and people understanding that they are required because the watershed's fuel resources are scarce and what is scarce has to be effectively used. Often cows are distributed along the milk route with little attention paid to the capacity of the watershed to support them with fodder, water, or the skills required to manage them. If these cows happen to be distributed along the milk route, it is a bonus, if not, official pressure on the Union to extend its route will be met by arguments of "non-viability".

Links, therefore, are required to make each programme successful and sustaining; but these links must be established at the watershed level. Integration therefore requires decentralisation. Links will not emerge if programmes are sanctioned and implemented at District and Block levels which are subject to various outside pressures like politics, finance and financial year ends over which the local group has no control. Without links at the local level these programmes will need to be implemented and sustained by action or pressures from outside. For how long, for example, will we continue to motivate veterinary camps and organise the Government Departments to run them? When will the local groups realise the essential features and links involved to run a dairy programme and establish these features and these links in a management model which they understand and can maintain? Integration at the watershed level, through appropriate institutions of the people is an essential feature of PIDOW's Watershed Management Model.

The Department of Soil and Water Conservation concentrates on gully plugs, bunds, terraces and contours mainly along the upper reaches; they call this watershed  management. In PIDOW this programme could be described as "a plan to manage soil and water in a shed" and not "Watershed Management" which is more comprehensive.