halli

Rural Poor and Common Property Resource
Water has changed the lives of farmers in Halli village of Basavakalyan Taluk, Bidar District. Common Property Resources (CPRs) such as traditional tanks; streams(nalas) repairs and development; and check dams have been instrumental in this change.

Halli is a multi-caste village covered by Phase 1 of the ISPWDK project started in 1995. It is located on the upper reaches of sub-watershed no. 1 and micro-watershed no. 10. There are about 155 families in the village with a population of 1400 (650 female, 750 males), of which there are 30 dalit (Scheduled Caste) households, 64 backward communities, and 61 other communities.

Interventions in Halli Village:
The first intervention in Halli village began in the year 1995 when we started creating awareness among the community on the ISPWDK project, its objectives and activities. The project staff faced many challenges but they persisted in trying to organise the community through a detailed step-by-step approach that involved:

• Organising a series of meetings with all the households of the village,
• Conducting exposure visits for motivated resource men and women to successful watersheds such as PIDOW in Gulbarga, Ralegaon in Siddhi etc.
• Enacting street plays and dramas in the villages to create awareness on aspects of watershed development and management.

The above process took about six months.

Organising Self Help Groups and Watershed Management Committees
After awareness building, four Self Help Groups (2 men, 2 women) were formed with the resource-poor households. The SHGs were formed with the objective of giving focussed attention to the development of marginalised, poor households. As on February 2002, there are 110 households under the SHGs in Halli village. They have taken up many livelihood activities such as dairy, poultry, petty business etc.

The formation of Watershed Management Committee (WMC) began during 1996 and the composition of WMC included representatives from diverse sections of community such as the women, the landless and the SHGs. The role and responsibilities of WMC included actively supporting the planning for watershed development activities and support for implementation. It was also envisaged that the WMC would be responsible for maintenance and management of CPRs such as water harvesting/ conservation structures and biomass plantations in the common lands.

During 1996-97, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods were used as tools for planning watershed development activities. The exercises used were resource mapping, social mapping, transect walk, timeline, seasonal diagramming, trends and changes. These PRA exercises brought out the problems, needs, and opportunities for interventions in the private lands of each farmer, as well as in common lands including drainage courses. The community contribution for PPR development was 25 percent and for CPR it was 5-10 percent. Accordingly, the implementation plan was drawn up and put into action by the farmers with the support of WMC, Dry Land Development Board (DLDB) and PRAWARDA.

Increase in land productivity
All the farmers used to grow sugarcane under irrigation, and sorghum and pigeon pea under rainfed conditions. The yield of sugarcane before the project intervention was about 20-25 tons per acre while sorghum yield was 3-5 quintals and pigeon pea 3 quintals per acre.

After the project intervention, there has been increase in crop productivity and area for Rabi crops. Sugarcane yield has gone up to 30-40 tons per acre, while the per-acre yields of sorghum and pigeon pea have become 15 to 20 quintals (shift to hybrids from local varieties), and 5-6 quintals respectively. Wheat has been the major Rabi crop, which yields around 20 quintals, and some farmers are also growing sunflower (6-10 quintals).

As part of the watershed treatment, nala desilting and widening was planned and implemented. This resulted in prevention of flooding in cultivable land and water stagnation. WMC representatives reported that farmers were extremely happy with the desilting work.

"We were taken on an exposure visit to the watershed projects in Maharashtra. It was there that we got the idea of constructing a vented check dam (VCD) to stop water in the stream, and divert the flow to fill up the old tank called Hokrana," they said.

More...