April 2017 – Page 3 – EARTH,SPACE & BEYOND

Community Participatory in Watershed Management [5]

April 5, 2017October 19, 2017 by S.T. PradopoNo Comments

Pitfalls Regarding Local Characteristics The lesson learn of Ralegan Siddhi might be experienced differently in other places. Some pitfalls that must be deliberately in mind are: Reflections on The Experience and Insights Gained - Community Participatory in Watershed Management [4] Though there has been tremendous improvement in the status of women and much has been done yet more remains to be done to involve them fully in the process. This means that women development needs specialized and extra effort. There is no effort towards the development of agro-based rural/small scale industries to enhance the value of the products and keep the participation of the people intact. The managerial capability is weak and it is reflected in the failure of cloth cutting and tailoring scheme and thereby weakening the participating of women. It is not easy to find a devote and committed leader like Anna Hazare in the second generation to keep the process going. His effort to choose a leader so far remains unresponded. ...

Community Participatory in Watershed Management [4]

April 4, 2017October 19, 2017 by S.T. PradopoNo Comments

Reflections on The Experience and Insights Gained The insights gained from the experience of Ralegan Siddhi may be identified as below: Approaches/methods Used for People's Participation - Community Participatory in Watershed Management [3] Involvement and participation of the people is possible provided there is a committed and sincere leadership to educate, organize and motivate the people for the attainment of a common goal. Voluntary action either by an individual or people is an extremely vital factor to promote, facilitate and catalyze people's participation in sustainable village development. A mix of commitment with flexibility, sensitivity, innovativeness and autonomy are essential for success. Holistic approaches to people's participation in sustainable development are necessary for involving people whole heartedly. The approach being employed must have the potential to generate the spirit of cooperation, caring and sharing, adjustment, harmony, self-help, self-reliance and special emphasis on the resource poor farmers particularly women. Need-based planned initiatives and their proper priorization by the people themselves through democratic decisions with focus on...

Community Participatory in Watershed Management [3]

April 3, 2017October 19, 2017 by S.T. PradopoNo Comments

Approaches/methods Used for People's Participation The approaches/methods used by Kisan Baburao Anna Hazare, popularly regarded as 'Anna' (elder brother) is quite different and unique. The approaches for the participation of farmers in natural resource management works are highlighted below. Participation of Resource Poor Farmers in Ralegan Siddhi, India - Community Participatory in Watershed Management [2] 1. Persuasion First of all, Anna went through a careful envisioning of the deteriorating situation in village life and decided to initiate through religion-moral undercurrent by persuading the people for reconstruction of Sant Yadava Baba temple. But he failed to impress and influence the people at large, primarily because the people were too busy with their own business and the worldly affairs. 2. Gandhian approach The second step was to set up examples by self-practising rather than mere preaching as Mahatma Gandhi used to do. Initially it went on unnoticed but in due course it gathered momentum. Particularly, he tried to organize the youths of the village under 'Tarun Mandal' (youth organization). Besides, participation...

Community Participatory in Watershed Management [2]

April 2, 2017October 19, 2017 by S.T. PradopoNo Comments

Participation of Resource Poor Farmers in Ralegan Siddhi, India The agricultural land in the country is owned by individuals, where as large irrigation schemes are owned by the Government. Rich farmers have their own irrigation structures - tanks, lift devices or tube wells. The resource poor farmers can hardly afford to utilize costly inputs. Besides, only about 40% of the people have access to land which also suffers from skewed distribution pattern. 49% of the cultivated land belong to 10% of farmers with large holdings of 4 ha and more (1985-86). Only 13 % of the land belongs to 50 % of the farmers with marginal holdings of one ha or less. The common lands too are often encroached by rich farmers. Introduction - Community Participatory in Watershed Management [1] Unequal access to land, water and other resources is a major constraint to people's participation in true sense in many places. This is in two forms: First, extensively large cultivated farms. Secondly, due to hereditary...

Community Participatory in Watershed Management [1]

April 1, 2017October 19, 2017 by S.T. PradopoNo Comments

Introduction - Community Participatory in Watershed Management In most southeast Asian countries, watershed protection has been the overt objective of a great deal of government policy dealing with management of upland areas (Swallow, Garrity & van Noordwijk, 2001). In many cases, watershed projects ask the poor people who use upper watersheds to provide an environmental service for their wealthier neighbors in lower watersheds (Kerr, 2002). When this is not accompanied by appropriate compensation to the people in upland areas, watershed projects face difﬁculties during implementation. Difﬁculties in the implementation of watershed management also relate to the complex characteristics of the watersheds: multiple communities may use upper and lower reaches for multiple purposes; watershed resources provide different services to different users; and users are affected differently by resource use decisions (Kerr, 2002; Johnson et al., 2001). To make watershed development more successful and sustainable, participation of the stakeholders, for example local people, is therefore an important issue. Development should therefore also involve, not only...