MORE than two-thirds of India’s population is dependant on land. It is significant that this percentage has remained almost unchanged in the last 80 years. The reason is not far to seek. Employment generation in the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy is unable to absorb even the additional urban labour force. Therefore, scope for the rural work force finding meaningful employment in the urban sector is severely limited.

With an increasing capital output ratio, the income elasticity of employment in the non-agricultural sector keeps declining, making it more difficult for the urban sector to absorb the extra manpower that is intended to be released from land.

During the last three decades three programmes have been tried on a large scale to help alleviate rural poverty – land reforms, the Integrated Rural Development Programme (focusing on self-employment in the non-agricultural sector) and wage employment programmes. These were not generally targeted to improve productivity of marginal lands in rainfed areas and, therefore, did not show a sustained increase in rural incomes. On the other hand, due to soil and water run-off, the health of the two most important resources in rural India – land and water – has fast declined. This paper traces the background of the present approach to wasteland development, and suggests some measures to improve the sustainability of the current programme.

According to the nine-fold land classification, out of 304 million hectares of land in India for which records are available, roughly 40 million hectares are considered totally unfit for vegetation. It is either urban and under other non-agricultural uses such as roads and rivers, or is under permanent snow, rocks and deserts. The break-up of the remaining 264 million hectares of land that is fit for vegetation is as follows:

The above land use classification, however, does not say anything about the extent of land degradation or loss in productivity over time due to various natural and man-made causes. Not only are culturable wastes and pastures considered highly degraded – that is, producing biomass much below their potential – even a substantial part of cultivated and forest lands have lost their productivity due to inappropriate land use and over-exploitation.

The National Commission on Agriculture estimated that 175 million ha of land was under some form of degradation and was in need of attention. According to the commission, all rainfed paddy lands in the country were subject to water and wind erosion and thus in the 175 million ha the commission included 85 mha of cultivated land too; of the remaining 90 mha there would be (35 mha) of degraded and barren forest lands and the rest 55 mha would constitute common and revenue lands.

 

 

A vital piece of information about non-forest wastelands pertains to its ownership. There are three obvious categories: private, community and government. In addition to uncultivated lands which were historically part of the farmers’ holding, especially in ryotwari semi-arid areas, many poor families have been allotted some 6 mha of wastelands under various programmes over the last 20 years. Thus, substantial culturable waste area has been privatised as a conscious policy outcome, although such lands may still be lying uncultivated. Besides, there are encroachments, mostly unrecorded.

A large part of this land may be suitable for growing grasses, shrubs or trees, but not crops. The same is true of government wastes that are owned by the government but used by the community, and grazing lands which are generally vested in village bodies. There is little de facto distinction between the two categories, as both are used for grazing and are generally quite degraded. These are also referred to as common or village lands. There is much regional variation as well as variation between neighbouring villages. In villages of intensive cultivation, common lands are of marginal importance, but in hilly and unirrigated villages common lands still offer livelihood possibilities for the poor.

 

 

Village lands have generally been a victim of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ phenomenon where they are exploited by all, without anyone considering himself responsible for maintenance. A laissez faire policy was followed by the government with respect to these lands. Neither were any funds allocated for them, nor was any specific government department made responsible for grasses and pasture development. As these lands could not meet peoples’ needs, the biotic pressure on forests increased, leading to degradation of forests too.

By the mid-seventies it became evident that if peoples’ demands for fuelwood and fodder were not met, it would be impossible to even save productive forests. This was then sought to be achieved through a programme of social forestry on village and private lands. The philosophy around afforestation of common lands in the social forestry programme was that these lands were to be brought under the forest department’s control, in the hope that the trees would be later handed over to the village communities for protection and management.

 

 

However, the forest department (FD) could not look after small patches scattered over hundreds of villages in a district, creating enormous problems of protection leading to high mortality. The continued involvement of FD in the initial years discouraged local bodies from taking over, as a result extending FD management. Besides, government failed to define, establish and publicise the rights of the people to the trees and the procedures for marketing and allocating benefits. The shares that would accrue to the individuals, village, panchayat and FD were not clearly laid down. Insecurity about benefits led to indifference on behalf of the people.

Thus, in perspective it appears that the two policies on wastelands – the land distribution policy of the 1970s and the social forestry of the 1980s – seem to have been influenced by Hardin’s ideas that there are only two sustainable solutions: either the commons should be privatised, or they should be brought under the control of a coercive state authority. A third model, of community control over commons and over the programme for their regeneration, was not given any thought in these models. As discussed later in this paper, the experience of the last 10 years shows that community control is the only option that generates sustained benefits, both social and private.

 

 

In 1985, the Government of India set up a National Wastelands Development Board to promote peoples’ participation in afforestation programmes and to regenerate the health of India’s wastelands. A target of afforestation of 5 million hectares a year was set up for the board. Later, a Department of Wastelands Development was created in 1992. New structures, however, did not mean new policies. The same old approach of bringing lands under government domain continued.

The Department of Wastelands Development, while issuing sanctions, insisted that the government agency involved with plantations should have complete control over lands where trees were planted. Even for farm lands, the guidelines stipulated that the executing agency produce a certificate from land owners that they had authorised the agency to execute works on their lands. Thus the people, whether on public wastelands or on their own lands, were supposed to be mere spectators; they had no role in planning or execution of the programme.

Second, the problem of degeneration of village wastelands was seen as arising from peoples’ demand for fuelwood and fodder resulting in lack of tree cover. Therefore, the programme concentrated on production of fuelwood. Actually the loss of soil from such lands was linked more to lack of control of run-off of rainwater. It was not so much a demand problem as that of land management, especially common lands.

Without controlling run-off it was not possible to stabilise water regimes even for crop lands, and it was a mistake to look at the degradation of common lands in isolation to the other issues of low productivity of crop lands in rainfed areas. Thus, it was difficult to rehabilitate degraded lands without introducing moisture conservation and water harvesting measures. Such measures are needed for all rainfed areas put to biomass production.

The main thrust of the programmes should have been on activities relating to soil conservation, land shaping and development, pasture development, and water resources conservation for the entire watershed, not merely afforestation on wastelands. Even when such schemes were undertaken by the agriculture department, these remained departmental in approach with no involvement of the people. Maintenance of the created assets suffered, as beneficiaries were not motivated to assume responsibility for maintenance. Besides, these were implemented in an isolated and segmented manner and watershed as a unit of area development was totally lost sight of.

 

 

It is estimated that up to the end of the Eighth Plan about 16.5 mha rainfed/degraded land had been treated/developed. However, these achievements are not reflected in the data for net sown area, which has remained almost stagnant at around 142 mha for the last thirty years. This indicates that either the treated lands were already under cultivation or an equal area is getting degraded or diverted for non agriculture purposes. The possibility of bogus reporting also cannot be ruled out.

The 1999 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General states that despite spending Rs 2195 crore on the Drought Prone Area Programme (DPAP) between 1973 and 1995 the drought prone area increased from 55.3 mha to 74.6 mha in the same period. There was insufficient evaluation of the quality of works and even run-offs not measured, with the result that survival rate of plantations was very low, and structures to promote water and soil conservation were not maintained.

The evaluation reports have shown that watershed development programmes cannot succeed without full participation of project beneficiaries and careful attention to issues of social organisation. This is because success depends on consensus among a large number of users. The costs and benefits of watershed interventions are location-specific and unevenly distributed among the people affected. Moreover, collective capability is required for management of commons and for new structures created during the project.

 

 

These shortcomings were taken care of, at least on paper, with the acceptance of new guidelines on watershed development based on the Hanumantha Rao Committee report with effect from April 1995. It provides for the development of an entire compact micro-watershed rather than pieces of wastelands scattered at different places. The strength of the guidelines lies in the decentralisation of decision-making process by involving local panchayati raj institutions and people at grassroot level. It aims at establishing a system under which village people can actually involve themselves in the planning, implementation and monitoring of watershed development programme.

In the preparation of the watershed development plan, user groups and other people depending directly on the watershed have to be actively involved. Another strength of these guidelines lies on the flexible approach followed in the method of release of funds, the area to be covered in each watershed, as well as choice of components. Besides this, the new guidelines also attempt at making these projects sustainable by establishing a watershed development fund and involving people in deciding equity issues and usufruct sharing mechanisms.

Technical assistance was to be provided by a multi-disciplinary team comprising experts from various departments and sectors to the programme implementing agencies (PIAs), which could be a line department, a NGO, a panchayat or a user group. A well-designed training programme was given top priority in order to create awareness among functionaries.

 

 

Progressive guidelines, however, do not always lead to desired action. The field staff is not trained to solicit participation, which continues to be ‘an ideology without methodology’, without a road map in sight. Disregard of peoples’ participation is a legacy of the ‘PWD culture’ governing civil works. It also represents a continuation of the colonial approach to conservation, where community stake in resources, their knowledge and management systems do not count. The state’s appropriation of community resources and dismantling of traditional management systems for CPRs and the promotion of conservation – technique-dominated, top down, government supported – initiatives are other factors which marginalised the communities and their stake in the resources.

Local collective action in the last 30 years has also been undermined by a number of political and economic processes. Village societies have become heterogeneous, and market forces have commercialised the erstwhile subsistence economies integrating them with urban and national economies. Possibilities for migration and mobility tend to work against cooperation. Moreover, anti-poverty programmes such as the Indira Awaas Yojana increase the dependence of the poor on the village elite and petty bureaucracy and at the same time make them compete within themselves for limited favours from government. This adversely affects the sustainability of people coming together for a common cause.

Cooperation works best in small groups with similarity of needs and clear boundaries, and shared norms and patterns of reciprocity. Competitive politics erodes the traditional authority structures, and modernisation improves the options of both exit and voice for the common people. As old authority structures crumble, appeals to government for conflict resolution and arbitration become more common, and dependence on government for local resource management increases. Many rural communities in developing countries are now in this difficult transition period, with traditional institutions on the decline while new self-governing institutions are yet to be born.

 

 

Although five years is too short a time to evaluate the new guidelines, yet limited evidence suggests that most projects have failed to generate sustainability. A major study was done for the ICAR in 1998 (reported in Farrington edited Participatory Watershed Development, OUP, 1999) of 70 villages in Maharashtra and A.P., covering several watershed programmes. The survey revealed that increase in agricultural production did not last for more than two years. Structures were abandoned because of lack of maintenance and there was no mechanism for looking after common lands. Farmers were not convinced about the need to contribute, which would happen only when they make the decisions about what kind of measures are introduced on their plots.

Often, in government projects, farmers do not have this choice and technological norms are too inflexible. The very fact that farmers are unwilling to contribute towards the cost of works shows that they have little faith in the effectiveness of the programme. Except for the villages where NGOs were active, all other programmes scored poorly. In many cases performance in control villages which had no investment was better. Most government watershed development investments have yielded disappointing results given the vast resources allocated to date.

 

 

For watershed projects to be sustainable, community managed systems are needed and they can succeed only with farmers’ contribution and their commitment of time and resources. Although the common guidelines prescribe that those benefiting from works on private land should make a contribution of 10% of the total cost and 5% for works on common lands, in practice it has been difficult to either collect these charges in full or recovery is often shown on paper but adjusted by the contractor in his bill.

For sustainability it is important that the contribution from farmers be a necessary commitment before the start of a project, for that would ensure a sense of ownership leading to better quality and transparency and assured money for maintenance. It may be pointed out here that Myrada, an NGO working in southern India, insists that all works on private lands should be fully financed by the individuals concerned.

Watershed development projects are being implemented by several departments of the Government of India, often with different guidelines. This causes confusion and brings a bad name to the GOI because state governments get the impression that there is no effective coordination between different central departments. Even when the approach or guidelines are common, funds are sanctioned by different departments, and each does its own separate monitoring.

 

 

Other reasons for poor implementation of watershed projects are:

* Insecurity about availability of funding at the grassroot level, as there is no guarantee that funds would be released in time by the GOI or other funding agencies. Pressure to spend available funds by a fixed deadline so that more funds could be demanded.

* Limited time permitted for preparatory and group formation activities. A strict orientation to achieving physical targets discourages field staff from taking time to promote social organisation. Field staff has no incentive to make the effort to pursue participatory approaches.

* There is little impact assessment or evaluation of physical progress after the scheme has run for a couple of years. It is taken for granted that once money has been spent, physical progress automatically results. It is quite likely that soil conservation structures may not last for more than a few years, or plantations may not survive.

* Unclear criteria for selecting areas and villages or for withdrawing from a village.

* Limited human resource capabilities. Government staff have sometimes subcontracted all work related to participatory processes to NGOs without developing any internal capacity.

* As funds from the Ministry of Rural Development go straight to the districts, there is little involvement of senior state government officials and line agencies. Watershed development programmes require a comprehensive and integrated approach involving several line departments and, therefore, the full involvement of state governments is essential.

* In the present form, schemes are left to be planned and executed by district level officers. The capability of district level officers to plan and write a good project is extremely limited. Moreover, once it is realised that senior officers from the divisional and state capitals take no interest in such schemes or their interest is limited to monitoring of financial expenditure alone, the quality of project preparation and of implementation suffers a great deal.

* Horizontal linkages between various line agencies at the district level are very weak. Thus, although watershed development may require integration of soil conservation techniques with plantation, there is little likelihood of effective coordination between the district soil conservation officer and the district forest officer. The tendency in Indian administration is to look up to seniors rather than establish linkages with officers in other departments at an equal level.

* There is no arrangement for handing over of structures and maintenance of plantation after a project is completed. Therefore, sustainability of projects gets impaired.

 

 

It should be stressed here that watershed development programmes should only indirectly address the problem of poverty or unemployment. It should be aimed at increasing or stabilising the carrying capacity of land and water resources in rainfed areas. As poverty is both a cause and effect of over-exploitation of natural resources, successful implementation of watershed development programmes would result in sustainable reduction in poverty. On the other hand if production is not emphasised as the goal, one may end up by achieving neither reduction in poverty nor employment.

At the same time, given that development of agriculture on a watershed basis would be biased in favour of those who own land, it is important to ensure that the landless do not suffer in contrast. Access to land through pattas on common property resources, equitable distribution of grazing opportunities, usufructory rights on forest produce and development of non-farm employment would have to be ensured in order that equity considerations are not lost sight of.

Furthermore, the interface of the watershed associations/committees with the panchayati raj institutions, particularly the gram panchayats, is tenuous. Of course, members of the watershed association are also members of the gram sabha, but they would have to be made accountable to both the gram sabha and the gram panchayat.

 

 

A new Department of Land Resources has recently been created in April 1999 by merging the schemes of area development, such as DPAP, DDP (Desert Development Programme) and watershed development/soil conservation/social forestry part of the Employment Assurance Scheme with the present Department of Wastelands Development. In order to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated, the new department would have to lay greater emphasis on performance. Capacity building of grassroot organisations in planning, monitoring, implementation and marketing should be the future strategy. Other features of the new approach should be:

* There should be constant monitoring, evaluation, impact assessment by external experts. NABARD, MANAGE, NIRD, among others, should be involved in this exercise.

* Funds in the first stage should be given for those states that set up organisational structures to properly appraise and evaluate such projects.

* High priority should be given to rejuvenation of village ponds and tanks, and recharge of groundwater.

* There should be integration of all area development with the felt needs of the people, such as drinking water and credit.

* Panchayats should be involved and their involvement should include transfer of funds to such village level bodies, including user groups, who would handle funds and the job of government agencies should be to facilitate and train rather than control funds. Where panchayats represent several villages, single village organisations, as sub-units of panchayats should be created, so that land in question is appurtenant to one village only to avoid conflict.

* The ownership and control over revenue wastelands should be transferred to PRIs and village organisations to ensure certainty of tenure. In ex-ryotwari states, transfer of revenue lands to panchayats has still not been done, which makes it problematic for the village panchayats to ‘own up’ efforts on such lands.

* Since cultivable wastelands in many states have already been settled with the poor, special projects should be undertaken to make such lands productive. Private ownership will help in sustained increase in land productivity.

 

 

In short, the objective of all land based intervention should be, ‘to enable rural people in rainfed regions to prevent, arrest and reverse degradation of life support systems, particularly land and water, so as to produce biomass in a sustainable and equitable manner.’

It is important to look at forest lands, non-forest wastelands and crop lands in an integrated manner. This is often not done as upstream treatment to reduce soil movement does not benefit large farmers who are downstream. They see no advantage and are indifferent or opposed to this strategy. They would prefer to conserve and harvest water in the drainage line so that it can be used directly for irrigation or to replenish groundwater.

However, lands in the upper catchment should be rehabilitated first for at least three reasons. To benefit the landless and the poor who depend on the upper slopes; so that groundwater recharge begins at the earliest; and by the time the lower catchment is treated any debris and erosion running down from the upper catchment has been minimised.

 

 

However, upper slopes are typically under the control of the forest department, which does not permit other departments to operate on its lands. The Ministry of Rural Development has recently permitted its funds to be used in watershed schemes by the FD, but a similar initiative is needed from the Ministry of Agriculture too.

One of the least understood but most useful concepts is the issue of complementarity between forests and agriculture. If it is strengthened, the local community develops a stake in the preservation of forests, which can deter individual attempts at encroachments or degradation.

Also, at present, the three life support systems, i.e. land, water and forests, remain unintegrated administratively and management-wise. Therefore, the government should strive towards an integrated planning approach at the village level through peoples’ participation. It is only by linking the future of forests and uncultivated lands with crop lands and groundwater recharge that will ensure the sustainability of government efforts.

 

* The views expressed are personal and do not bind the organisation for which the author works or has worked in the past.