| Watershed Development Programmes (WDPs) in India were conceived as tools for correcting the regional imbalances in agricultural development created by Green Revolution, through investments in soil and water conservation (SWC) and natural resource management (NRM) in rainfed areas. Though the overall impact of WDPs has been positive and significant, with increase in physical and economic access to groundwater, landless and marginal households hardly benefited from watershed development. Recent evidence points out that in many watersheds inequities increased, since for non-land owning and -well owning households access to drinking water, grazing lands and other natural resources decreased. This paper is based on a research project carried out by the... |
