“Water – A colorless, transparent, odorless, tasteless liquid that forms the large seas, lakes, rivers, and rain. It is the basis of the fluids of living organisms.”

This is a very simple definition of water is often not treasured as a precious and inseparable part of every human life. People living in the drought prone areas know the real value of water and take to desperate water conservation measures so that water availability is present for them as well as for their future generations.

This is the sphere where the District Watershed Development Unit intervenes in providing important measures and steps towards providing sustainable means of conserving water for drinking purpose as well as for irrigation and its allied activities. The success of the watershed activities in Shishak village of Rajkot was visibly scene in the post Hariyali and IWMP era.



Shishak is a village in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat which is characterized by low and uneven rainfall area with average productive soils and to make agriculture more sustainable in such circumstances is a major task. The main challenges which makes agriculture more difficult is scarcity of water for agricultural and domestic purposes, low crop productivity and environmental degradation, low crop productivity, high rate of migration, low wages of labour and lack of awareness regarding farm mechanization. All these factors yield to decrease in per capita income which ultimately responsible for their poor standard of living.

Various activities were undertaken to solve the problem of water scarcity such as afforestation, construction of check dams, deepening of the existing check dams, farm bunds, etc. groups were also formed such as user groups, watershed committees and SHG groups so that people themselves take of the structures built an feel a sense of responsiveness towards the structures built and they save it for their future generations.

All these improvements has caused betterment of the environment which majorly talks about the increase in ground water table by 1.2 meters and tree cover has increased by 7.65 ha. and 390 tons/hectare/year.

The impact of these watershed activities could be seen with the naked eyes. As the village is in a drought prone area hence the first impact was seen on the agricultural production in the mentioned village. The water table has increased due to the efiicient and effective use of the watershed activities (average water level has risen upto 2m). This has resulted in reduced cost of producing irrigated crops and because of which the quality of these crops would be benefit the farm operator as they can now provide 2-3 irrigation to the standing crops which ultimately increases the net farm revenues by 4 times and its yield has increased the income and opportunity of farm labour. As a result of such huge benefits, the costs of check dams and farm pond have recovered in the very first year of project. Due to the construction of check dams and farm ponds the farmers are now able to get 100%crop production of the Kharif crops such as groundnut, cotton, etc. the rabi crop production has also taken an invariable toll such as the production of wheat, green fodder and gram. Not only in the agricultural sector but also the animal husbandry sector has also achieved great improvement. The ultimate result can be seen in better standard of living of the people of Shishak village. Harvesting of rainwater and treating runoff is the prime objective of construction of such watershed management activities. Before the check dams and farm ponds were made the recharge open wells was poor due to inefficient management of rainfall and runoff. The water present in the wells was used for crops of cotton and groundnut and it was exhausted before the summer season arrived. The depth of wells could not be increased due to the inference of rocky layer in those wells. But after 32 numbers of water harvesting structures constructed with a total surface storage capacity (of all the water harvesting structures) of 701190 cum the average water level increased. As many as 190 open wells existed in 2002-03, with very poor yield with an average water column of 3.0 m in 2003, but presently there are 244 wells with mean water column of 4.2 m. The total recharge taking place through natural and water harvesting interventions is greatly affected by the amount of rainfall, its intensity, duration of monsoon, ground and sub-surface characteristic (i.e., percolation rate and runoff coefficient). Another major breakthrough is that the average pumping duration of 4.15 hours per day in 2002-03 has increased to 5.45 hours per day after watershed implementation.

Social benefits cannot be left out as they are the main pillars behind the success of any project or programme. The social benefits gained from the post Hariyali era are women empowerment and increase in social capital. There has been tremendous involvement of women through the formation of SHG’s and this has resulted in their overall development. As already mentioned the formation of a number of village level committees, the social capital has also been on a rise.

After the hariyali project was over then IWMP came up as a hero and after a study found out that the Hariyali project only covered 500ha of land but there was still a large part of area in Shishak village which needed treatment and hence, in Batch I(2009-10) total area proposed to be treated is 435.50 against the cost of Rs. 65.33 lakh. 46 User Groups (UGs) were formed to carry out the work, monitor their progress, enjoy their benefits and take care of the assets thus created. Along with the UGs, 4 women-Self Help Groups (SHGs) and 1 men-SHG were created to participate in the project and take benefits. There is adequate involvement of women in these groups and their opinions were also taken into consideration.

Watershed Development Programme is now a proven technique of livelihood enhancement through natural resource management. The programme is running throughout the country supported by different agencies; Ministry of Rural development (Department of Land Resources) being the most important one.

Contributors : Sharmeen Ahmad and DWDU Rajkot