Watershed Approach—A Ray of Hope to Rainfed Farmer

The Indian economy mainly depends on stability of crop production in rainfed areas, as it contributes to 42.2 per cent of the total food production in the country. The crop productivity in irrigated areas has reached near saturation and scope for increasing area under irrigation is limited. Therefore, the option left is to develop rainfed areas to meet the food requirement of ever growing population. In rainfed areas most of the holdings (80 per cent) are marginal (<1 ha) and small (1–2 ha) and as such the prevailing fragile socio-economic conditions of these farmers have aggravated problems of achieving higher crop productivity in rainfed areas. The research information generated for rainfed areas has shown great potential to increase crop production besides offering better alternatives for non-arable land use. Realising this potential in rainfed areas, the Government of Karnataka (a southern state in India) took a pioneering step in constituting Dryland Development Board to implement the `Watershed Development Programme (WDP) in all the 18 districts of the state on the model of Kabbalanala World Bank Aided Watershed Project. The DLDB is unique in terms of unified approach, integrated development of an area, research linkage and flexibility compared to a number of past attempts to develop rainfed areas. The operational area of these Watersheds varied from 15,000 to 45,000 hectares.