5.9. Output of the PRA Exercise : In terms of concepts, the people should begin to think of the micro watershed as one drainage system; to treat it therefore requires the cooperation of all. Further, the causal linkage between degradation and falling productivity should be made visible using instruments and techniques with which people are familiar; they may not produce accurate data but will help to encourage reflection and discussion. It is important that the PRA generates some confidence in their ability to achieve the plan to regenerate and sustain the watershed. This is why it is essential that outside participants in the PRA do not give advice during the exercise or discredit in any way people’s efforts to manage their resources.

In terms of instruments required to implement the treatment plan, the PRA should produce a basic treatment map of the area which is understood by the people so that they can explain it to others. The treatment plan should list the types of activities required on Private, Common and Government lands; if a model could be made and placed within the watershed it would help to keep interest alive. In terms of organisation of the PRA should initiate discussion on the needs to set up a WDA or a WIC consisting of representatives from all the credit groups as well as of groups of farmers who are not in the credit groups like large farmers and those living outside the watershed. Care must be taken to involve the vulnerable groups like tribals and women. A Watershed Budget must be drawn up, discussed and accepted publicly.

It is also necessary at the end of the PRA to list briefly and initiate discussion on the roles of the WDA/WIC; a few are listed below; others could be added on by the participants :

-To assess once again after a few days whether the treatment plan conforms to requirements on the ground and to the individual farmers who may have been reluctant to express their views during the PRA since they could be controversial or cause conflict; or because outsiders were present.

- To put together a final budget for the treatment plan: This exercise also requires other decisions on matters like the following; the contribution of each farmer in cash and kind to the work on his fields and on common lands; what should be done with the contribution in cash; the basis of payment for work done on private lands; whether on labour days or unit costs; the time frame for implementing the treatment plan.

- To mobilise labour instead of the traditional practice of employing contractors or piece workers; this is an important responsibility since the pressure to hire contractors or outside labour is great, especially when the work is supervised by local level Government employees.

Discussion on these roles and responsibilities (among others) of the WDA/WIC need to be initiated at the end of the PRA and a general consensus arrived at to form the WIC/WDA, who will be the members and to empower it to call a meeting of its members to deal with these issues as they arise and to take urgent decisions if required which would then be fed back to the credit and other groups.

6. A meeting (or meetings) should be called by the WDA/WIC preferably on its letterhead (which should be printed in the interim) to be attended by the representatives of the groups involved, the staff of Government at field and middle levels and of the NGO to consider the following issues :

- To fix the date for marking by Government staff.
- To assess the level of technical support required. From experience in Kadiri, Bangarpet and Huthur we find that people are quite capable of implementing terracing, bunding and establishing silt traps without any outside technical assistance; major drainage systems and weirs (which have low priority) may require technical help though the problem with drainage is more social, than technical.
- To finalise the percentage of people’s contribution in cash or kind with respect to each activity and to decide how to manage the contribution in cash.
- To decide whether funds should be given to individual farmers as grants or as loans.
-To prioritise the treatment activities. Though the PRA will describe all the interventions required, it tends not to list the people’s priorities. We find that in Bangarpet and Kadiri where the implementation is not directed by outsiders, the people decide which activity is important; the common basis for prioritisation is their perception of immediate increase in returns and proximity and control of the resource so that they obtain maximum benefit as soon as possible. It is in this area that technical experts will require to modify their stand since they follow certain procedures governing priorities; NGOs also have to revise their enthusiasm for treating common lands before private fallow lands.
- To fix the basis of payment - unit costs or labour days.
- To settle the day for payment if this involves the Government or the NGO.
- To set up a system to monitor the quality of work done and to solve the problems that may arise when several farmers have to work together.

7. Consolidation of the treatment plan and preparation of the treatment map; this is done by the Government (DLDB in PIDOW) together with MYRADA technical staff.

8. Verification of the treatment map in an open meeting called by the WIC/WDA in the village; all the families involved should be invited to participate in this meeting together with Government staff and the NGO.

The meeting should end with the treatment map signed by all parties concerned. The WIC/WDA signs on behalf of the watershed groups.

The meeting ends with the clear recognition that the WIC/WDA will be the responsible body to implement the treatment plan and that all outside intervenors will deal with the WIC/WDA in all matters.

9. Before bringing this part to a close it may be useful to make a few general observations related to the process during the planning phase based on several experiences in micro-watershed management. They concern some important issues like equity, livelihoods, flexibility, appropriate systems and structures, which have an important bearing on sustainability.

9.1. The Experience of Mobilisation : One observation of MYRADA staff is that there has been very small or no attempts at mobilising the entire village over the past 30 years. The last effort made in some villages was during the period when community projects were given an impetus in the fifties and early sixties. Since then all interventions have been directly to individuals through the several anti-poverty programmes; often these "beneficiaries" were selected by local politicians, representing various interest groups. This approach served to polarise groups rather than to mobilise the entire village. Micro-watershed management however, requires that all families in the village are involved - even the landless who depend on the village resources for their livelihood and fuel/fodder needs. Hence, a strategy is required to mobilise people and to sustain their interest; this is an important role that the NGO has to play.

9.2. The Need to Broaden Options : People’s expressed needs and the opportunities to which they respond are those that concern their livelihood. When their needs are discussed, watershed treatment is not given priority. Land use is one part of the whole livelihood issue; hence the proper management of land and resources must be viewed as a support base to broaden the set of their options. The credit groups fulfill this function, to some extent, by providing small loans for income generation schemes of their choice, but the support must be expanded to include training/upgrading in skills and exposure toalternatives in and around the area from which they can select livelihood activitieswhich they find manageable and viable.

9.3. The Need for Equity : It is by broadening the set of options that the landless find opportunities for their livelihood. For example, as members of the credit group, they are eligible for loans. Further, the regeneration of fallow lands and wastelands provides them with opportunities to harvest fodder and fuel. The NGO must ensure that the landless are able to use these opportunities. Other vulnerable groups like tribals and women need to be organised in separate credit groups which give them a degree of independence and confidence which is the basis to assume further responsibilities and to benefit through greater access to and control of the resources of the watershed provided productivity has first increased all around.Social pressures tend to exclude these vulnerable groups. The nature of the watershed programme, which is land based, tends to marginalise the landless. The NGO, therefore has to take special care to introduce a bias towards these vulnerable groups without creating conflict at this early stage which will result in further marginalisation of the poor since they are still vulnerable.

9.4. The Need for Sustainability : The other major objective that the NGO needs to give priority to is sustainability which in this programme comes down to the ability of the farmers, especially the small and marginal ones, to sustain the work they have done on their lands and the ability of the families in the watershed have established to manage the watershed resources and to resolve problems and conflict. The small and marginal farmers and landless will continue to need a credit source; this is where the credit groups play a significant role in sustaining the treatment works. The initial steps to establish these groups needs to be taken during the entry phase; the most important of which is to identify the affinity groups or the socially viable groups whose members can remain united and work together without the constant intervention of the NGO.

As far as institutions to sustain the activities of watershed management are concerned, representatives from various groups, need to come together to form a WDA/WIC. T take over responsibility to finalise the plan and to control the implementation. This will be treated at length in the following chapter. This shift from the initiative taken by the NGO during the entry phase to the dominant role that the WDA/WIC should play during the implementation is crucial to sustainability; however, it is evident that to reach this stage the watershed groups require atleast a year of intensive effort to build their confidence and to enable them to perceive the potential for success if they undertake such activities. All obstacles to the growth of the WDA/WIC and to the transfer of power to it, need to be removed; one of these obstacles is the intervention of agencies both Government and NGO at the implementation level.

The small and marginal farmers who are traditionally in the debt of the larger farmers need to build up an independent source of credit to meet their urgent needs if the watershed institutions are to function in the interests of all the members both big and small. Therefore, the credit groups are important not only as a source of funds to maintain watershed structures, but also to enable the poorer families to maintain a degree of self-reliance and independence which is essential for their sustained growth.

9.5. The Need for Appropriate Structures : The people in all the watersheds where MYRADA has intervened are engaged in dryland farming. They have constructed structures with locally available materials - largely boulders and flat stones. They have the skills required to construct these structures. Introduction of high cost structures involving cement and steel require contractors and skills not availablelocally. It also opens the door to corruption, poor quality work and above all projects the message to people that they have no control in implementation and that the beneficiaries of the treatment works are outsiders. Appropriate structures are indigenous, low cost and can be maintained by the local people. These are the structures that the treatment plan should focus on.

9.6. The Need for Flexibility : Many of the appropriate structures do not conform to the structural designs in official manuals. To insist that the official designs are maintained will be to undermine sustainability, since the objectives of people will not beachieved. For example, the shape of structures prescribed in official manuals to hold silt, encroach on the neighbours fields and often cause conflict. The farmers know that a near vertical wall may result in a few boulders toppling over occasionally; but he prefers to replace them when this occurs rather than to construct a structure which is entirely stable but could cause conflict with his neighbour. The trend to recommend a "perfect" remedy is also inappropriate. For example, while "Vetiver" may be practical as an alternative to earthen bunds in some areas, it is surely not a universal remedy as often projected.

CHAPTER III

The Participatory Process During Implementation

1. It is often assumed that the processes that govern planning are carried over in implementation. If therefore, the planning process has been strongly influenced by a participatory culture, this culture should also influence the implementation of theplan. Our observations over several MYRADA Projects however, tell a different story. Infact in some projects, what emerges is that while on the one hand a level of concern tointroduce a participatory process in planning is increasing, little or no attention isgiven to the level of participation in implementation; as a result the involvement of people in implementation shows a marked decline. This fortunately is not true in all MYRADA projects; yet in general there is need for a closer analysis of peoples role in implementation.

The reasons for this gap between the levels of participation in planning and in implementation are many and differ from project to project, but there are a few common and important ones which have been identified; some of them have also been addressed.

1.1. The pressure to achieve targets : This pressure is noticeable and operates in all MYRADA projects where Government funds and personnel are involved as well as in projects supported by one of our major donors. While the pressure from the Government is partly due to the system of evaluation which tends to stress heavily the achievement - or lack of - the target number of families to be supported under a particular programme,the donor referred to operates under pressure - which is passed on to the partner NGO - to spend the funds allocated by the budget approved for a financial year. Since the budget is prepared at least a year and a half before implementation starts the situation in the field changes, which in turn affects the allocations in the budget. That the budget is an essential tool for planning is accepted, but to make expenditure a major indicator of success is dangerous and leads to a sharp decrease in the space given for participatory process to play a major role during implementation. It is therefore not surprising that this donor has no place in its feedback and evaluation systems for local resources (cash mobilised from people and local Government) which indicates to adegreethe involvement of local people in the implementation process and the willingness to invest in their own progress. Their contribution makes them stakeholders and helps to ensure that investment is made in income generating projects which they can manage and which have more chances of becoming sustainable. The "target approach" and the "pressure to spend the budget", obstructs the participatory process that evolved during the planning phase from continuing and gathering strength during implementation. 

1.2. The culture and practice operating in bureaucracies practically ensures that those who are involved in planning are not those who implement the plan on the field. Besides, the former group has a higher status; this is particularly true of Government, and therefore impacts on programmes where Government staff are operational with MYRADA. Planning is an exercise that is traditionally given a status which implementation does not enjoy; more recently those handling computers for monitoring and evaluation are also accorded a higher status. Those who monitor, evaluate, plan or deal with computers tend to have not only higher qualifications but also hold senior posts in the bureaucracy than those who are given the job of implementation. The planners areconsequently higher paid than the implementers and this difference in salaries clearlyprovides a status to the planners. As a result, those who are involved in the planning exercise tend to have the time and confidence required to join in participatory appraisal exercises in the field especially if those exercises have acquired the glow and status that PRA has brought. To have participated in a PRA exercise is becoming one of the indicators of being in touch and upto date with the latest fashion; whether this exercise has helped to change attitudes and approaches is another matter. The implementers on the other hand tend to be either junior staff (who are usually supervisors) and field level staff with lower qualifications who have little chance of promotion but who are supposed to "implement" the plan. However, they are often marginalised; even when they participate in the planning exercise, their participation is limited since senior officers are around; it has often been noticed that the people participate in PRA exercises far more than the Government field level staff.

1.3. The Government field level staff in PIDOW Gulbarga have little stake in the participatory process; it is time consuming for one and provides people with the power to monitor their work which they usually resent. They consider the people lower in status and give them the same treatment that they are accustomed to receive from their superiors. Besides, they usually live far from the work spot, and in some areas they have other duties to perform. Their interests often do not coincide with those of the people; for example, they usually prefer to hire labour than to allow people to work on their lands or in their watershed. The result of such differences at the field level at the time of implementation is sometimes fed back to superiors as "non-cooperation of people", "lack of technical expertise among people", refusal to accept and implement plan", etc. If an NGO is involved, suspicions are aroused that the NGO is encouraging people to question Government staff and interrupt their work.

1.4. Field level staff (of Government and often the NGO) are not in a position to make adjustments on the field since they are accustomed to obey orders and to implement an approved plan; they cannot allow any change in plan which people may want to introduce in the field while work is in progress in order to make the structures more manageable or to serve purposes that were not taken into account in the planning exercise. For example in one area in PIDOW, the people wanted the boulder bunds not only to prevent soil and water erosion but also to protect their fields from cattle; this requires that the bunds become walls. Now the accepted structures for soil and water conservation are smaller rounded bunds which cannot protect the fields from animals. The field level staff however are not in a position to take decisions to change the shape of the structure.

1.5. An assessment of MYRADA-PIDOW where a number of field level Government staff are engaged in implementing the plan for watershed treatment, indicates that the project (includes the three partners SDC, DLDB and MYRADA) have not given adequate attention to interact with and train field level staff of the DLDB and the peoples’ groups  by far the major portion of time spent on workshops and meetings was with staff at higher level. Field staff did not have the opportunity to participate freely in workshops where the concept of PIDOW was discussed. In MEADOW(6) Dharmapuri, on the other hand training courses were held for the field level staff and for the groups during 1992.

A study of the process that is emerging in PIDOW over the past one year during theimplementation of the treatment plan provides a few insights that could help to make implementation a participatory experience with results that are both manageably by the people and sustainable. The experience of the process in Micro Watershed Management in the Kamasamudram Project of MYRADA which started as an integrated programme covering a wide area and only after a few years of experience focussed on six micro watersheds within the larger project area, has features which are significantly different from those of PIDOW and have been useful in analysing the processes that emerged in PIDOW. The following observations are focussed mainly on the PIDOW experience, but are also relevant for other MYRADA Projects where the management of Micro Watersheds has emerged in a significant way.