Implementation of Watershed Development Programmes in India: A Situational Analysis of Selected Dry Regions

India is a water stressed country if not yet water scare country yet. Water is crucial to maintain it’s economic growth and retain self-sufficiency in food production along with realization of safe drinking water to all. Most of the large dams are either over exploited or closer to saturation. Micro watersheds are the key for water security in future. Though country has lunched watershed for all most 60 years still only a third of rain fed area in the country is under watershed development. Despite spending millions of dollars watershed development is yet to realize its full potential. Crucial to the development of successful outcome of micro-watershed intervention is its stake holders; state, PIAs, communities, donor agencies and institutions with technical expertise. Watershed is no longer seen as technical challenge but a nucleus around which sustainable livelihood, ecological security and empowerment of marginalized communities can be enhanced. This paper beings out the specific challenges India is facing in water security in future, water conservation practices in ancient times to modern times and it’s relevance, benefit of promoting micro-watersheds, current state policy towards watershed development and issues that need to be addressed at grass root level for better implementation of the watershed programmes. Nine districts in three states; viz. Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan which have large rainfed areas were covered in the field work. Out of ninety villages covered i.e. ten villages in each district, only fourteen of them has any IWMP intervention. The investigations shows all 14 IWMPs are either lagging or stagnated, yet to be operational in any credible sense, most of them hardly have any livelihood activities and political differences at local level seriously crippled the functioning of the watershed committees. Urgent intervention is required to ensure timely release of funds from center to state to institutions below, better coordination among various departments operating in the watershed area, putting effective mechanism to ensure difference among villagers not crippling functioning of the watershed committees and to ensure timely training and credit supply to self-help groups to motivate them to take up some livelihood activities. The better management of watersheds are crucial to water security and water governance in India. None of these projects visited by us were of any possibility for conducting any rigorous exercise involving advance analytical tools like cost-benefit techniques, Net Present Value Techniques or sensitivity analysis. JEL classification: Q25, Q28, Q29, Q30