Accepted Papers - 3.pdf - UNESCO

3. Socio-economic upliftment of farmers-
Livelihood issues.
2.0 Location and Watershed information
Watershed Dedag, is situated on Rajgarh -
Haripurdhar state highway, 10 km from Rajgarh
town in H.P. The watershed is situated at 77 0 24’E
and latitude 30 0 50’N with height varying from 1600-
2348 meters above mean sea level. It has total
effective area 570 ha.The watershed consists 180
ha of total culturable area and only 116 ha is being
cultivated presently. The irrigation facility at
watershed is only restricted to 43 ha whereas rest
of the area is un irrigated .The main source of
irrigation is rainfall and natural springs. There are
145 families (SC-67, Gen- 78) which has been
covered under project from five villages namely
Dedag, Sanio, Matari , Jelag,and Khanoteo. The
total beneficiaries are 753 out of which 392 are male
and 361 female. Most of the family member (719)
are literate and majority families ( 90%) earn their
livelihood from agriculture.
3.0 Concept
There is growing realization that technology
generation, dissemination and adoption cannot be
taken in isolation. So National watershed
development project for rainfed areas, Dedag, has
been conceptualized differently from other Extension
and Developmental programmes to solve farmer’s
problem in participatory mode and through
community action. Participatory endeavour of
watershed project is to bring about the socio
economic transformations by way of diversifying hill
farming for complete sustainability. So, a systematic
approach is followed to achieve the objective.
Participatory approach is an important initiative to
decentralize decision making process and promote
ownerness among the farming communities. These
paradigms of development are required for
sustainable improvement of socio economic condition
of resource poor stakeholders.(Mishra,2001) In this
process, the real issues are analyzed by sharing
experiences and knowledge of local communities and
external service providers. This empowers the
people in decision making by sharing responsibilities
and accountabilities of activities to be carried out.
The bio-physical and socio-economic constraints,
priorities and preferences of interventions were
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identified before launching the program through
agro-ecological system analysis. The professionals
and stakeholders work jointly for problem solving
and decision making processes. The service provider
acts as facilitators and the stakeholders as actors
while preparing the project in participatory mode.
Technologies generated at institute were assessed
and refined through adaptive research and
disseminated to farmer’s field by conducting
demonstrations in a participatory mode.
4.0 Methodology
The national watershed development project
for rainfed areas is basically a Participatory
programme based on a community managed system
called- “Jalagam Sangh” and all the development
work has to be executed by the farmers under the
guidance of experts. Therefore to achieve this
objective a team of experts from Hill Agriculture
Research and Extension Centre (HAREC)
Dhaulakuan.(H.P Agricultural University , Palampur)
worked with the farmers on following lines.
4.1 Social Aspects
Community Organization
Capacity Building
Planning. Execution of programme.
4.2 Developmental and technical Aspects
Technical programme (Survey, Design etc.)
Farm Production system interventions.
4.1 Social Aspects
Important socio-psychological components
(confidence building ,motivation, aspiration, conflict
resolution, learning and transparency) ,which play
crucial role in accomplishing sustainability were