Above: Watershed measures in Maharashtra Photo: WOTR

~ Guest Post by Zareen Pervez Bharucha 

Farmer after farmer had the same story: fields were parched, wells were empty, it was painful to see the land crack up and peel away like the soles of ones’ feet. ‘What can we do? This is what Nature has become,’ they said, in interview after interview.

I was speaking with farmers in Parner taluka in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district. My conversations were part of a research project on the long-term impacts of watershed development. In the same taluka, the village of Ralegaon Siddhi had turned dry fields into green farms using soil and water conservation and a strict set of rules governing land management. Their example and those of other seminal cases have shown the amazing potential of decentralized soil and water conservation. These successes have helped launch watershed development as India’s foremost strategy for dealing with the nexus of dryland degradation, rural poverty and hunger. I was curious about the lived experiences of people in ‘normal’ – rather than well-known – watershed projects. Continue reading “Digging deeper into water scarcity after watershed development” →