Participatory rural appriasal for watershed management

Natural resource management is essential for sustainable livelihood gathering and realization of environmental externalities by the communities. Paradigm shift of demand driven micro-level management of resources calls upon intense interaction with the villagers and harmonization of improved technologies with indigenous wisdom as well as sharing of responsibility, accountability and power with the people. Micro-situations, socio-economic relevance, confidence gaining, equity, gender neutrality, transparency, conflict resolution. articulation of aspirations by stakeholders, and integrated use of resources are considered important initiatives of sustainability. The watershed has been accepted as geohygydrological unit for integrated management of natural resources in India. Department of Wasteland Development, Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment financed six watershed development projects for evaluating their guidelines of participatory management of resources in different agro-ecological settings of India.

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) exercises carried out by different teams of multi disciplinary facilitators have been documented in this book. The exercises were undertaken in the village micro-situations by deploying farmers on participatory approach. All steps of PRA were followed for preparing social, resources, and hydrology maps on the ground by means of colour powder (Rangoli). Thereafter, these maps were re-drawn by participants on paper sheets for documentation. The same process was adopted for the analysis of seasonality, matrix ranking, preferences, wealth ranking, livelihood information and venn diagram. In order to verify the ground truth of information provided by the farmers. systematic transect walks across the village were performed along with the stakeholders. Historical events were solicited from elderly persons of the villages. It was quite encouraging that farmers and the farm women revealed indigenous technical knowledge of their traditional system of resource management strategies. Based on income, wealth ranking analysis was conducted to record livelihood of the farmers. Venn diagram was drawn to indicate importance and relevance of facilities and institutions available in the village by means of varioussizes of circles and length of lines connecting them with the Centre.

PRA analysis carried out in different agro-ecological regions by different teams highlighted its tremendous sensitivity to micro-situation variations. There was a large range in farmers preferences, identification of problems and traditional wisdom. Women in some of the watersheds took active part for enlisting preferences of vegetables, and upheld their wiews during triangulation analysis. In most of PRA studies main problem was scarcity of vater both for irrigation and drinking requirements. While ranking, soil erosion, inadequate mproved seeds, chemical fertilizers and community issues were other important priorities.