Indo Swiss Participative Watershed Development - Karnataka

vds in nirgudi

Nirgudi village is located nine kms away from Basvakalyan Taluk in Bidar district of north Karnataka. This is one of the seven villages of Upper Mullamari Watershed and it comes under the Hyderabad-Karnataka area, which is the most backward district in Karnataka. The area is frequently affected by drought leading to migration of the poor families to cities like Bombay, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. ISPWDK Phase 2 started its development work in the village during May 2000.

Nirgudi village is a multi-caste village and has 414 families with a total population of 2455. The caste-wise classification of households is as follows:

Sl. No.	Type of Households	Total No of Households
1	Scheduled Caste	85
2	Scheduled Tribes	42
3	Muslim	02
4	Other Backward Communities, Maratha, Lingayat, Reddy	285

As per land holding the following classification has been observed:

Sl. No.	Type of land holding family	No. of. Families
1	Landless Families/ Labourers	110
2	Marginal Farmers (2.5 Acre)	76
3	Small Farmers (between 2.5 to 5 Acres)	167
4	Medium Farmers (between 5 to 10 Acres)	53
5	Big Farmers (10 Acres)	08

The following facilities cater to the village needs:

Sl. No.	Type of Amenities	Total
1	Primary schools (1 Marathi medium, 1 Kannada medium)	2
2	Human Health (ANM centre)	1
3	Animal health service	Doctor visit on request
4	Milk Marketing Facility (KMF)	1
5	Library (daily newspapers for readers)	1
6	Gram Panchayat	1
7	Post Office	1
8	Agriculture Assistant	Visit the village
9	Village Accountant	Visit the village
10	Telephone Exchange

Prawarda has been working in Basvakalyan since 1994 and was part of ISPWDK Phase 1 (1995-1999). Prawarda was responsible for mobilising, organising and capacitating the communities for the development of watershed and livelihood opportunities of the resource poor in the village.

Village Development Society
"People and communities are the focus as well as the main actors in development. All others take supporting roles."

Sustainable improvements will be realised only if people take control over the development in their village. Development efforts should therefore empower the people and support the establishment of appropriate peoples governance systems at the local level.

The ISPWDK project focuses on building approaches that allow local communities to become the main actors in improving their livelihood opportunities through sustainable Natural Resources Management (NRM).

The concept of Village Development Societies (VDS) emerged when searching for an appropriate institutional set up that can address long-term developmental issues at the village level. The VDS is expected to take responsibility for the implementation of development activities in a sustainable manner. It is envisaged that the experiences with the project implementation will result in mechanisms and capacities that will enable the village communities to address other needs outside the purview of the project. As such, VDS has responsibilities that extend beyond the watershed development programmes envisaged in ISPWDK.

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