Watershed Development In Sukho Majri Village

INTRODUCTION: In the early 1980s, the people of Sukhomajri village in Shivalik range of the Himalaya in Haryana's Ambala district earned nation-wide acclaim for the way in Which they had utilized their forests and water to their benefit. An estimated 5,000 khair trees had matured in the 400 hectare Sukhomajri forest. At an average price of Rs 1,000 per quintal of heartwood, these trees could reap more than Rs 50 lakh in timber alone. One quintal of khair heartwood yields up to 6 kg of katha – an extract used in medicine, pan and natural dyes - that sells at Rs 500 per kg, adding up to Rs 1 crore to the nation's kitty. About 5,000 trees would mature in the forest every year. It was the result of a joint forest management programme introduced in 1976 that Sukhomajri prospered. For the rest of the country, Sukhomajri became a model of community participatory management. The project began in the mid-1970s out of concern for the silting-up Sukhna lake near Chandigarh, which had lost nearly 70 per cent of its water storage. P R Mishra chose Sukhomajri, which is in the lake's catchment area, and constructed four check dams and planted trees. Initially, Mishra's attempts at regenerating the local environment failed because the villagers had little regard for Chandigarh's water concerns. A change in attitude occurred after 1977 when four tanks built successively created an increased storage capacity and increased crop yield rates from 6.83 quintals per hectare in 1977 to 14.32 in 1986. "Water acted as the catalyst in the transformation. In return for water, the villagers were ready to protect the watershed," (Mishra). The income that began to come from cutting bhabbar grass and harvesting mungri or forage grass started to change the face of the village. Prosperity became a by-word. The 80 households in the village replaced their thatch-and-mud dwellings with brick-and-cement houses and about 40 of them owned television sets. With growing prosperity, Sukhomajri villagers were becoming increasingly conscious of economic self-reliance in the creation of community assets. They stopped auctioning bhabbar grass, which their Hill Resource

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Management Society (HRMS), set up in 1980, leased from the forest department, to contractors. Just about five years after the setting up of the HRMS in 1980, the annual Household income increased to Rs 3,000. Sukhomajri was one of the few villages to be taxed on income from natural regeneration. A 1989 amendment in the Income Tax Act brought registered societies such as HRMS within its purview. HRMS was liable to pay 15 per cent income tax, but it took the initiative to have such societies exempted the same year. However, the society continued to pay 10 per cent sales tax on bhabbar, which was imposed in 1993 with retrospective effect from 1991. They also had to pay a toll on bhabbar taken to the paper mills in Himachal Pradesh at the rate of Rs 100 per carriage. However, bhabbar turned out to be a point of conflict in later years. In 1995, the forest department arbitrarily divided the 400 ha hill tract between Sukhomajri and Dhamala, a neigbouring village, disrupting a unique resource management programme. Till the forest department intervened, the two villages used to share forest produce on the basis of social fencing. They shared grazing rights in the same forest area. Thus, the two villages began to compete for fodder. The division of the forest also threatened social co-existence. Dhamala village, consisiting of upper caste Jats, were given a portion more saturated with bhabbar, the division placing them in a position to reap most of the bhabbar bonanza. Sukhomajri villagers,consisting of lower caste Gujjars, were no longer allowed to collect fodder from the Dhamala section. This led to tensions and a worsening conflict.

Objectives: · To examine the socio-economic benefits in water harvesting system in Sukhomajri village in Haryana. · To examine the water availability before and after induction of harvesting system in Sukhomajri village in Haryana.

·

To examine the agricultural development in water harvesting system.

· To analyse the impact of micro-watershade management in natural resource conservation. · To analyse the role of Water Users Association in conservation and distribution of natural resource management. MICRO-WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT IN SUKHOMAJRI VILLAGE: Sukhomajri village located near Chandigarh; hill resources management society is a village level institution with one member per household to ensure collective responsibilities and rights in the micro-watershed development and protection of the heavily degraded forest land that lies within the catchment of the minor irrigation tank; the multiple benefits of this project include increased water harvesting, ground water recharge, and reduced soil erosion leading to three times increase in crop production, increased grass/fodder availability, increased milk production, increase in annual household incomes. Problems of Sukhna Lake: _ Massive soil erosion _ Loss of the hill forests _ Over grazing Watershed development techniques adopted: _ Building small earthen dams raised agricultural output

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_ Dam tripled crop yields _ Economic benefits of rehabilitating the hills _ In Nada village, production of crops went up from a dismal 40 kilograms per hectare in the 1970s to over 2,000 kilograms in 1986.

The Greening of Sukhomajri: Sukhomajri, a village in the state of Haryana, is not unlike thousands of other villages in India's hill areas that suffer ecologically under monsoon conditions. There is one difference: Sukhomajri is the site of an innovative water management and soil conservation project. The village is located in the foothills of the Himalayas, where overgrazing and deforestation have led to massive erosion during the monsoon season. Agriculture cannot be practiced productively during the dry season because of a lack of water. Water control and the erosion of land are major barriers in India's efforts to increase its agricultural productivity. In recent years, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research has been aiding efforts to control erosion through projects in which scientists collaborate with farmers to develop new practices. A key participant in this effort has been the council's Central Soil and Water Conservation Research and Training Institute at Dehra Dun.

A few years ago institute scientists began testing new conservation and farming practices in the village of Sukhomajri. The project has two aims: to increase the villagers' incomes and to protect the fragile watershed of the hills in the region. Sukhomajri was selected because of its strategic location at the head of a watershed that drains into Lake Sukhna near the model city of Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana states. The lake had been rapidly silting up and seemed destined to vanish in a few years. Sukhomajri has a population of forty families, who farm an area of some sixty acres. Many of

them have per capita incomes of $100 a year, well below the Indian poverty level. In working with the villagers, institute scientists soon learned an important lesson. Conventional pleas not to cultivate unsuitable land or to control cattle grazing did not work. Villagers were living too close to the subsistence level to reduce their consumption of resources. But they did respond when a project was proposed that would promise them an immediate benefit. That project was the construction of a small dam that not only prevented soil erosion but also provided water for household needs and irrigation. One result was the doubling of crop yields. In addition, the villagers began to cooperate in watershed conservation efforts, understanding that the reservoir behind their dam would soon silt full if they did not. Increased crop production has made more fodder available, thereby reducing the grazing pressure on the land. The farmers are grading, leveling, and terracing their lands to prevent erosion, and more land is being planted in fruit trees and vegetables. Because of the success of the Sukhomajri project the Indian government is mounting a much larger effort to develop similar irrigation and conservation projects. Its initial efforts are being assisted by Foundation grants to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the Bharatiya Agro-Industries Foundation. The ultimate aim is to create hundreds—perhaps in time thousands—of "Sukhomajri model" projects throughout the Himalayan hill country. To improve and manage degraded forests near their homes. This year the Foundation continued its support of such projects through a grant of $197,500 to the Ranchi Consortium for Community Forestry. In Indonesia the pressures of population and economic growth have led to expansion into areas whose ecology is not well understood. Support went this year to a center on resources and the environment at Gadjah Mada University that has begun using advanced scientific techniques such as photographic interpretation and satellite imagery. The center provides training for professionals from governmental and private agencies in resource analysis and management. Additional support also went to the University of the Philippines at Los Ba ños for its research and training in environmental and resource management. Indonesia's Peasants' Socio-Economic Development Foundation, a developer of rural cooperatives, received a grant of $300,000. This private organization has been enlisted by the government to train field workers and to develop income-generating

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projects and credit assistance among poor rural women. Bogor Agricultural University also received a grant to increase the capacity of its Center for Rural Sociological Studies for research on the needs of rural women. Supplementary funds went to the Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh for its Women's Section, which was created in 1978 to analyze the effects of agricultural policy and programs on rural women's employment and to suggest ways to improve their economic status. In India the Foundation to Aid Industrial Recovery (FAIR), a voluntary agency, received $276,000 to expand its management services to agencies working with the rural poor whose livelihoods depend on food processing, dairying, cloth making, and other cottage industries. One group being helped is the Neglected and Forgotten Artists' Cooperative, a community of desperately poor itinerant artists and craftsmen; FAIR is helping them to obtain social services and to market their handicrafts and performing skills.

Project Experience: During the 1970's and 1980's there are instances of communities protecting natural forests either on their own initiative or with the encouragement of the officials of Forest Department. Two such projects, which emerged in the 1970s, were Arabari in West

Bengal and Sukhomajri in Haryana. The pioneers of these projects were foresters who firmly believed that forest could not be protected from impoverished villagers, acutely dependent for their survival on unsustainable exploitation of forest resources through policing methods. The projects highlighted the need to devise viable livelihood alternatives for the people so as to put an end to unsustainable forest exploitation and to acquire a stake in forest protection. Haryana initiative relates to'Social Fencing in Sukhomajri village during 1977-78'. The continuing siltation of the Sukhna Lake (Chandigarh) and the failure of all vegetative and mechanical measures to arrest the same compelled the official to find a solution in consultation with the local villagers of Sukhomajri. A small water -harvesting dam was constructed for irrigating their fields. With the increase in agricultural production, villagers came forward to protect the dam catchments from grazing so as to prevent siltation of their storage capacity. Earthen rainwater harvesting dams were built in adjoining forests for providing irrigation to small land holdings. All the households in the locality were entitled to have an equal share of water, irrespective of land ownership or size of land holding, in return for stopping grazing in the hills. The experience in Sukhomajri is based on the following principles. 1) Improving livelihood security of all forest dependent villagers by facilitating a switch over to a more sustainable, higher productivity, natural resource management system including both forest and non-forest lands. 2) Assuring its institutional sustainability through transferring resource management responsibilities to an autonomous community organization called Hill Resource Management Society (HRMS) founded on principles of membership access to all households and equitable sharing of the costs and benefits of protection among all members.

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The principles of Sukhomajri were incorporated in Haryana Governments JFM policy (June 1990). There are more than 50 Hill Resource Management Societies (HRMS) of villagers to protect approximately 15,000 ha. of forest land under JFM (as per 1996 estimates). Unlike the long gestation of benefit sharing from poles or timber in West Bengal, HRM became Forest Department's effective partners in Forest Resource Management thereby getting priority access to annual fodder and bhabbar grass leaves at non-market prices. Forest Department of Haryana have been working on evolving new strategies and procedural guidelines for the systematic expansion of JFM since 1989, but it has not succeeded in providing viable alternatives to prevent unsustainable forest use by the villagers. Although Haryana Forest Department has built a large number of water harvesting dams on the Sukhomajri pattern, the majority of them are non functional either due to technical faults or are not completed. The inadequate water supply compelled the economically dis-advantaged villagers to depend on forests for cattle grazing. Consequently Haryana's programme continued to remain more or less static where as JFM in West Bengal has expanded and became popular. JFM framework of West Bengal at present serves as a model for other States.

Water Shed Management Project : A Success Story of Participatory Approach Sukhomajri, a small hamlet of about one hundred families with average land holding of 0.57 ha, is located in the foothills of Shivaliks in Panchkula district of Haryana. It is at a distance of about thirty kilometers by road to the north-east of Chandigarh. A successful experience of participatory natural resource management, which has been proved to be conducive for bringing about socio economic and cultural transformation of the village community, has been initiated by Central Soil & Water Conservation Research and Training Institute, Chandigarh. Until 1975, Sukhomajra had no source of regular irrigation. The entire agricultural land (52 hectares) was under rain-fed single cropping. Small land holdings (less than one hectare per family) coupled with frequent crop failures due to erratic distribution of rainfall, made agriculture least dependable as a means of adequate livelihood. Consequently,

the people of Sukhomajri were forced to keep a large number of sheep, goats and cows to eke out a living. But, once the domestic animals, especially the goats and cows, were allowed to graze freely in the nearby hills, followed by indiscriminate felling of trees for fuel and other domestic consumption, the hill slopes, once covered with lush green vegetation, soon became bare and not even a blade of grass was to be seen.

SUKHNA LAKE TO SUKHOMAJRI: In the year 1975, the continuing problem of silting of the prestigious man-made Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh drew the attention of the Central Soil and Water Conservation Research and Training Center, Chandigarh. A reconnaissance survey conducted by the Centre under the leadership of Shri P.R. Mishra, the then Officer-in-Charge, revealed that the major source of sediment was about twenty-six per cent of the catchment area located in the close proximity of Sukhomajri and a few nearby villages. Sedimentation was caused by the erosion of the bare hill slopes caused by over -grazing particularly by goats whose rearing had been the traditional occupation of the Gujjars inhabiting the village.

CONSTITUTING OF VILLAGE SOCIETY: The attitudinal change as manifested in the concept of 'social fencing', was strengthened through the constitution of a village society in 1979 called the 'Water Users' Association', which later emerged as "Hill Resource Management Society' (HRMS), duly registered. The HRMS discharges three main functions; (i) (ii) (iii)

protection of hilly areas from grazing and illicit felling of trees, distribution of irrigation water from dams on payment basis and, maintenance of dams, water conveyance systems and other assets.

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The sources of income to the society are:irrigation water charges, sale of bhabbar and fodder grasses from forest area, income from leasing dam for fish culture and, one time membership fee. With the increase in income, both from farm and dairy sector, the economy of the villagers has shown a quantum jump. The villagers have been spending part of their income for constructing houses and a part in acquiring assets and modern gadgets. To address the problem the Research Center applied soil conservation techniques developed by comprising of mechanical and vegetative measures. This reduced the runoff sediment from the highly eroded Shivaliks at a spectacular rate from eighty tonnes to less than one tonne per hectare, within a short span of a decade. The vegetative measures consisted of planting of tree species like khair (Acacia catechu) and shisham (Dalbergia sissoo), in pits and bhabbar grass (Eulaliopsis binata) at mounds of trenches, and also Agave americana and Ipomea cornea, in critical areas to protect the soil against erosion. However, all these measures for containing the sediment in situ did not succeed in the absence of the willing cooperation from the people of Sukhomajri, who depended for their sustenance on the resources available in the catchment area. Hence, to promote agriculture and water availability in the area earthen dams were constructed. This resulted in rain water harvesting & storage which could be used by the villages for agriculture through out the year. Thus dependence of cattle grazing and rearing. The concept of social fencing gained wide recognition. The society agreed to protect the hilly watersheds from grazing and illicit cutting of vegetation and in turn, was allowed to cut grass to stall feed their cattle and collects dry and dead wood or pruned branches for their domestic fuel consumption. As a result, the forest areas which had a desolate look in the beginning of the project were covered with grass and trees within a period of 10 to 15 years. Grass production increased more than double in the same period (from 3.82 t/ha to 7.72 t/ha). Tree stocking in catchment area of three dams (Number per hectare)&(In percentage) Year

Dam Number

I

II

III

1980

103 (3.3)

64 (2.0)

27 (0/8)

1984

196

113

67

1988

288

161

112

1990

382

291

181

1992

393 (18.8)

415 (15.5)

211 (6.7)

Rain Water Harvesting: At Sukhomajri, four earthen dams have been built between 1976 and 1985. These serve three main purposes; firstly, to check instantly the gully formation in agricultural fields and, thereby, effectively prevent silting through the erosion of soil; secondly, to store surplus rainwater from the catchment area to be used later for irrigation after the withdrawal of monsoon and thirdly, rehabilitation of the catchment. Details of rainwater harvesting dams at Sukhomajri Dam No.

Year of construction

Catchment area (ha)

Storage capacity (m)

Command area (ha)

Cost (Rs.)

I

1976

4.3

8000

6.0

72,000

II

1978

9.2

55600

20.0

1,09,000

III

1980

1.5

9500

2.0

23,000

IV

1985

2.6

19300

5.0

1,50,000

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INCREASE IN CROP YIELDS: With the availability of irrigation water mainly for rabi crops and introduction of improved agro -techniques, there was manifold

increase in crop yields both for kharif and rabi. The average crop yields obtained before the project and during 2000 are given in Table. INCREASE IN CROP YIELDS Crop

Pre-project (1975-76) Area (ha)

Post-Project (1999-2000)

Average

Total yield

yield (q/ha)

(q)

Area (ha)

Average

Total yield

yield (q/ha)

(q)

Kharif

-

-

-

-

-

-

Maize

8.73

6.0

52.0

26.73

19.5

521

Sorghum

4.70

80.0

376.0

12.86

140.0

1800

Pulses

0.56

3.0

1.68

-

-

-

Paddy

-

-

-

11.70

25.0

293

Rabi

-

-

-

-

-

-

Wheat

8.60

8.0

69.00

46.1

27.0

1245

Gram

2.26

4.0

9.04

--

--

--

Sugarcane

1.20

150.0

180.0

1.4

250

350

(Fodder)

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CHANGE IN CATTLE COMPOSITION:

Social compulsions, economic considerations, self restrain and availability of ample quantity of grass and fodder, both, from forest area and agricultural fields, brought about a dramatic change in the cattle composition in the village. Besides, barseem (Trifolium alaxandrinum) is now being grown over an area of 4 ha with an annual biomass production of 140 tonnes. This has given a fillip to the dairy sector and boosted milk production over the years.

REPLICABILITY OF SUKHOMAJRI MODEL: The Departments of Forests, Agriculture and Soil Conservation, the World Bank aided Integrated Watershed Development Project (IWDP), in the North-West Shivalik States, have already implemented hundreds of such projects in this region. To site an example, till 1996 the Forest Department Haryana built approximately 93 rainwater harvesting dams covering 53 villages and about 70 such dams were built by Department of Soil Conservation, Punjab. The IWDP (Kandi Project) has adopted this model on a massive scale in the North-West Shivalik States.

LESSONS FROM SUKHOMAJRI: · · · ·

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Peoples’ participation must be ensured right from the beginning. The needs and the problems of the people must be identified at the outset. Unless a project is aimed at meeting their needs, solving their problems and mitigating their hardship, it may not succeed. Watershed Management Projects should have short gestation period. The benefits should available in shortest possible period. Constitution of a village society (HRMS) must be a pre-requisite before taking up such projects. The emphasis should be on sustainability and equity, i.e., all the common property resources must be available to all

sections of the society.

Conclusion: The institutional mechanisms by which the villagers of Sukhomajri in the State of Haryana, India, share the costs and benefits of watershed development are described. Village-level management in Sukhomajri revolves around the Hill Resource Management Society (HRMS). Runoff ponds were constructed, free grazing was eliminated, and erosion was controlled. As a result, vegetation on the hillsides was regenerated, siltation into Sukhna Lake declined by about 95%, saving the downstream city of Chandigarh about US$ 200 000 annually in dredging and related costs. At the time the project began in 1976, barely 5% of the hillside above Sukhomajri contained vegetative cover. By 1992, the production of various useful grasses rose from 40 kg/ha to 3 t/ha, while the tree density increased from 13 to 1292/ha. Villagers that harvest grass pay the HRMS, which in turn distributes all its revenues equally among the households. One of the lessons learned is that politically weak people need either legal rights or some other form of leverage if they are to insist on receiving and equitable share of benefits. Unfortunately, most watershed projects are very conservative when it comes to promoting equity through usufruct sharing mechanism.

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