Securing
Livelihoods
Emergence of the ‘Social’ in a Watershed Project in Odisha
Sailen Routray
and N. Shantha Mohan
 |
Watershed of Brooks Creek in Chatham County, North Carolina, USA
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons |
With the
traditional water resource development paradigm being contested, watershed
development is increasingly seen as an important strategy for the development
of marginal areas wherein rain-fed agriculture is prevalent. Critiques of the
fact that traditional watershed development approaches are iniquitous and
favour the landed and elite sections of rural areas have led to the growth of
the watershed-plus approach. A key aspect of the watershed-plus approach as
opposed to the traditional watershed development approaches is the importance
given to livelihoods.
The watershed-plus approach and its focus
on livelihoods and user groups as delivery mechanisms for projects (and the use
of such mechanisms for ensuring ‘participation’) is often seen as part of a depoliticizing
process that purportedly subverts the functioning of multipurpose local
government (Baviskar 2004, Manor 2004). Thus, the assessment of such a process
has often been a normative one. In this essay, we try and offer a narrative
with a slightly different focus.
Instead of judging whether the new generation
watershed-plus projects do indeed deliver on the promises of livelihood
generation for marginalized communities and whether they are effective or
equitable, we try to shift the narrative into a perceptual and descriptive
domain. What we try and do is map out the consequences of such a change in the
focus of watershed projects in the ways in which project beneficiaries and
lower-level staff perceive such projects. We also try and elaborate the effects
that such changes have with respect to the ways in which certain social
processes operate on the ground at the study sites and the modes in which
people on the ground perceive the government and its apparatus.
We do this by drawing upon fieldwork
undertaken in the project area of an ongoing watershed-plus project—the Western
Odisha Rural Livelihood Project (WORLP) that was being implemented during the time of fieldwork that took place in January 2009–February 2010—
in Kalahandi district in southwestern Odisha, which is being implemented under
the aegis of the Odisha Watershed Development Mission (OWDM). We posit that one
of the important results of this process of refocusing on livelihoods has been
the growth of the ‘social’ as a site and tool of governmental action.
The
emergence of the ‘social’ through the refocusing on livelihoods is reflected in
the organizational structure and project priorities of WORLP as well as the
perceptions of the project staff working at various levels of the project. By
doing this, we sidestep the issues surrounding ‘depoliticization’ and offer a
slightly different account of the processes set in motion on the ground by
focusing on livelihoods in the case of a specific new-generation watershed-plus
project. Thus, the overall thrust of this essay is empirical in nature.
WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA
In order to be
able to better contextualize the recent changes in the approaches in watershed
development, we trace a brief history of relevant processes and events here.
During the colonial period, watershed development initiatives consisted of
preventing soil erosion in the catchments of river valley projects and other
programmes for conserving soil and moisture. These initiatives lacked a
holistic approach towards watershed development (Samra and Sharma 2009). The
period immediately after Independence was marked by the dominance of the water
resource development paradigm, which was characterized by the building of big
dams and multipurpose river valley projects (Klingensmith 2007).
Over the last
three decades, the canal-oriented, water resources development framework based
on big dams for meeting the irrigation, water and livelihood needs of the
country has been increasingly critiqued by social scientists and those involved
with social movements (Dhawan 1989, Singh 1990). Commentators in India have
suggested that the watershed approach could function as an alternative to
mitigate the adverse effects of the water resources development approach (Mehta
2000, 2005).
Since the 1970s,
there has been a growing interest in watershed development and other localized,
decentralized ways of resource usage and management. The Rural Works Programme
(RWP) launched in 1970–71, which had watershed-related components, can be seen
as a precursor to the Drought Prone Area Programme (DPAP), which is, in many
ways, the mother of all watershed development programmes in India. During the
mid-term appraisal of the Fourth Five Year Plan, the RWP was redesigned as the
DPAP (GoI 1994). Many
commentators also trace the roots of modern watershed development projects in
India to purportedly successful village-level projects of the 1970s, of which
the most talked about ones are Sukhomajri in Haryana and Ralegaon Siddhi in
Maharashtra (Kerr 2002).
Following the
publication of the Report of the National Commission on Agriculture in 1974,
the Desert Development Programme (DDP) was started in 1977–78 (GoI 1994).
During the period covering the 1970s and the early 1980s, the performance of
watershed programmes was measured mainly through indicators with a biophysical
focus such as soil loss and water tables (Turton 2000).
The Swaminathan Committee Report of 1982 re-emphasized the
ecological goals of watershed development programmes and recommended schemes
that had a component of community participation (GoI 1994). In 1987, the DPAP was reorganized around water
harvesting. The late 1980s saw a change in priorities,
with the focus shifting from measuring progress only through improvements in
natural resources to the more overtly social concerns such as ensuring
livelihoods and broadening participation (Turton 2000).
During the early
1990s, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) became the nodal ministry
for watershed development in India, after which one of its chief initiatives
was the issuing of, what was called, ‘Common Guidelines for Watershed Development’
in 1994. Apart from other objectives such as an increase in agricultural
productivity and employment, regeneration of village commons and checking
migration, these guidelines also promoted a ‘community-based’ approach.
This
was part of a larger push towards participatory watershed management in India
in which many important non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as
MYRADA (Mysore Resettlement and
Development Agency) and donor agencies such as the UK Government’s Department
for International Development (DFID) played an important role by emphasizing
the new participatory watershed development approaches that focus on
livelihoods and poverty alleviation (Chhotray 2007).
In the
year 2000, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) revised the guidelines for the
National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas (NWDPRA), following
the overall thrust on participation, equity and sustainability. The guidelines
issued by the MoA were named as ‘WARASA (Watershed Areas’ Rainfed Agricultural
Systems Approach)–Jan Sahbhagita Guidelines’.
Following this, the MoRD revised
the Common Guidelines in 2001 and then again in April 2003, which were then
called the Hariyali Guidelines. Since the implementation of these changes,
watershed development has become central to the process of governmental
interventions in rural development with its focus on livelihoods and poverty
alleviation (GoI 2006).
The shifting focus
from biophysical regeneration to livelihoods and poverty reduction has seen the
emergence of the ‘social’ as a site and trope of governmental intervention as
opposed to the technical and the scientific. The implications of such a change
of focus need to be understood. This is done by drawing upon fieldwork
undertaken in an ongoing participatory watershed development project—WORLP—that
has an explicit livelihood focus, in one of the most ‘backward’ districts of
the country, Kalahandi, in the state of Odisha.
Kalahandi is infamous in India
as the land of hunger and starvation deaths. The district is seen as being
beset with droughts and water-stress. It is also overwhelmingly a rural
district with a high incidence of poverty. The initiation of livelihood
programmes based on the sustainable usage of local natural resources has been
advocated as a developmental intervention that can meet the needs of the
district (Pradhan 1993). In this context, the district is a productive site for
studying the operation of a new-generation, livelihood-focused, watershed-plus
project such as WORLP.
THE SITE AND THE FIELD
The
Area and the People
Kalahandi is
perceived to be one of the most backward districts in India. It is part of a
broader region in the southwest part of the state of Odisha called the KBK
region (taking the initials of the undivided districts of Kalahandi, Bolangir
and Koraput), which is characterized by widespread poverty, lack of healthcare
and other public services, and low levels of attainment in terms of
socio-economic indicators (Dash 2007).
The economy of the district is primarily
agricultural in nature, with little industrial activity seen here (Pati 2001).
It was a princely state that was incorporated into the state of Odisha after
Independence. The area of the district is 7,920 sq. km, and it has a population
of around 1,573,054 according to the 2011 Census.
Tribal groups
comprise a major proportion of the population of the district, with their share
at around 29 per cent of the total, whereas the other numerically significant
demographic group, that of the Scheduled Castes (SCs), comprises around 17 per
cent of the population (Banik 2007). The district has become synonymous with
hunger in India because of frequent reports of starvation deaths there (Currie
2000).
Kalahandi is generally seen as a drought-prone region, which is
perceived to be resulting in resource degradation and the concomitant erosion
of livelihood opportunities. Politics in the state and the region have focused
on the logistics of elections rather than tackling the issues of deprivation,
and many development programmes have been launched there without taking into
account the basic underlying causes of poverty and deprivation (Mohanty
1998).
The
Western Orissa Rural Livelihood Project (WORLP)
Increasingly,
watershed development, especially the livelihood-plus approach, is seen as an
appropriate developmental intervention in areas perceived as marginal drylands
such as Kalahandi. WORLP, a watershed project operational in Kalahandi and
promoted by the Government of Odisha (GoO) and DFID, follows a watershed-plus
approach. Apart from Kalahandi, it is operational in three other districts of
western Odisha—Nuapada, Bolangir and Bargarh.
The project is
managed by the OWDM, which is an autonomous agency under the control of the
Department of Agriculture of the GoO. At the district level, the District
Watershed Mission (DWM), Kalahandi, manages the project, with the project
director as the head, who is assisted by assistant project directors (APDs) and
capacity building team (CBT) members. At the sub-district level, Project
Implementing Agencies (PIAs) are involved in the project at the level of the
blocks.
WORLP is operational in six blocks in Kalahandi with three PIAs being
NGOs and other three being managed directly by the government. The project team
at the level of the PIA has watershed development team (WDT) members and
livelihood support team (LST) members. One of the WDT members is in charge of
the ‘social’ aspects of the project and is primarily involved in managing the
‘plus’ aspects of the project’s activities.
Each PIA has the
responsibility for around ten village-level watershed development committees
(henceforth called committees), which at the most primary level of the project
are responsible for the execution of the watershed development work. These
committees have been registered legally as societies, and each has a president,
a secretary and committee members. Each committee is supposed to have four
cluster level workers (CLWs) to assist its work, with one of the CLW posts
being that of the CLW social.
Before the
commencement of the actual project activities, the households in the project
villages were divided into four categories—very poor, poor, manageable and well
off. On the basis of these categories, the households were assigned numbers and
colour codes. The project has four broad heads under which activities take
place—administration, community development, natural resource management (NRM),
and the watershed-plus component comprising a revolving fund (RF) and grant.
In
the last category of project activities, self-help groups (SHGs) of women got
loans at zero per cent interest for livelihood-generation activities. Grants
ranging from Rs 4,000 to Rs 7,000 were supposed to be given to only those
households that fall under the ‘very poor and ‘poor’ categories in order to
help them enhance their livelihood options.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Fieldwork was
undertaken following a primarily qualitative methodological approach for the
study over the period January 2009 to February 2010 in the district of
Kalahandi at the project site of WORLP.
Various methods such as in-depth unstructured interviews, observations
and participant observation were used for conducting the fieldwork.
Two PIAs (one
an NGO and the other a governmental one) and one village at the project site of
each of the two PIAs were studied. At the village level, in-depth unstructured
interviews were conducted with 154 villagers. Thirty-one village level
functionaries of the project, thirteen PIA-level staff members of the project,
six district-level staff members of the project and three staff members of the
OWDM were also interviewed.
Observations were made of 15 monthly
meetings of committees, out of which eight took place in the two villages under
study. Three district-level review meetings of DWM, Kalahandi, and seven
PIA-level review meetings were observed. Two training programmes held under the
auspices of DWM, Kalahandi, were observed, out of which one was a three-day
long affair. Fifteen monthly meetings of SHGs of women were observed in the
villages under study. Apart from the observation of these formal processes, a
large part of the ethnographic fieldwork involved watching and following the
village-level, PIA-level and district-level staff (related to WORLP and DWM,
Kalahandi), who were pursuing their routine activities, as also observing the
everyday life of the villagers including the project beneficiaries.
DEVELOPMENT THROUGH LIVELIHOOD ENHANCEMENT: NEW SITES
OF GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION
Implications of the Focus on
Livelihoods
In many ways, the
current focus on livelihoods in watershed development has turned matters
through a full circle. When programmes such as DDP and DPAP were started, they
had a broader mandate of rural development. In the 1980s, with increasing
criticism surrounding the ineffectiveness of the programmes and the lack of
observable results in terms of biophysical criteria, and following the
recommendations of the Hanumantha Rao Committee, at least 75 per cent of the
project amount was mandated to be spent on NRM-related activities.
Following
changes in the international and national policy atmosphere and governance
agendas, non-NRM activities have again started gaining prominence. This has
happened not through the trope of rural development but through tropes such as
‘livelihoods’, ‘process focus’ and ‘participation’, and the emergence of the
‘social’ as an important site of governmental intervention.
This has also
happened as a result of critiques of older watershed development approaches
that were seen as being inequitable and as favouring the landed, elite sections
of village society (Sangameswaran 2006). The argument of this essay is as
follows: by refocusing on watershed development as a livelihood-related
intervention (as opposed to an intervention only or primarily focused on
environmental regeneration), the ‘social’ has emerged as a distinct site of
governmental intervention.
The watershed-plus approach is not a way of ‘socializing’
the former technocratic approaches to watershed development but is one way
(amongst many other parallel interventions) through which the state ‘seeps’
into village society. This ‘seepage’ is made possible by the practices that are
operationalized through new tropes of governmental intervention.
Emergence of Social Watershed
The watershed-plus
approach is not merely about adding ‘social concerns’ to an already existing
biophysical intervention. In Kalahandi, though the names of the micro
watersheds generally do not have the name of the village(s), the so-called
micro watershed is not a bio-geographical unit but a social unit composed of
one or more villages having around 500 ha of treatable area. The units that
were chosen for interventions in WORLP constituted a village or a set of
villages and not micro watersheds.
The only reference to micro watersheds seems
to be in the names that the committees give to themselves. The government has
identified villages that need ‘watershed treatment’ on the basis of certain
criteria, which also include certain ‘social’ criteria such as the proportion
of SCs and Scheduled Tribes (STs), the very poor and the poor in the
population. The basic units of intervention in watershed-related treatments
have thus been villages (a social unit) and not any ‘biophysical’ unit.
Middle-level officials on deputation from the soil conservation department
emphasized this fact, criticizing the ‘unscientific’ categorization of micro
watersheds. According to these officials, prior to the period when watershed
development work started taking place under the OWDM, ‘technocratic norms’ for
site and intervention selection prevailed, with watershed development having a
strong ‘technical’ focus.
Earlier, the soil
conservation department dealt primarily with farmers or peasants. The landless
primarily played the role of labourers and not beneficiaries. Because of the
adoption of the watershed-plus approach and work undertaken through the state-
and district-level watershed missions, the government apparatus now has to deal
with new population groups, such as the primarily landless SC groups. These
groups generally did not come into contact with the state apparatus through the
soil conservation department.
Questions
surrounding livelihoods are central to the watershed-plus approach, which is
premised upon the understanding that there are significant unaddressed social
concerns surrounding the exclusion of the non-landed in the ‘traditional’
watershed projects. This changed focus on the livelihoods of hitherto marginal
groups also tries to address the concerns surrounding the capture of
watershed-related interventions by the landed elite.
This felt and
expressed need for a ‘plus’ to the traditional watershed development approach
presupposes that ‘technical’ aspects such as the building of tanks are not seen
as ‘social’ interventions. However, the generation of livelihoods is seen as a
specifically ‘social concern’, which unites both ‘technical’ interventions such
as building tanks and wells (that are put under the accounting head of NRM in
WORLP) and ‘social interventions’ such as livelihood-related loans and grants.
This is reflected
in the organizational structure and recruitment practices of OWDM, in general,
and WORLP, in particular. In WORLP, the concern surrounding livelihoods has led
to the creation of the LST in addition to the WDT at the level of the PIAs, whose
stated job profile focuses on the promotion of livelihood-related activities.
The LST members are expected to support the effective implementation of
livelihood-related interventions, and their mandated roles include extending
help to form women’s SHGs, to help these groups diversify their livelihood
options and build federations, and to facilitate access to the various schemes
of the government.
The project
mandates that each LST should have four persons, with at least two of them
women. This team is expected to have competencies in various social techniques
such as participatory methodologies, gender analysis, monitoring and
evaluation, running of micro enterprises, and group formation, and it is
supposed to facilitate the development of processes such as those of leadership
development and conflict management (Johnston et al. 2002).
As this job description shows, most aspects of
their work are related to what can be considered as ‘social’ interventions,
which are a part of the more ‘technical’ aspects of the project that deal with
natural resource management. Thus, the institutionalization of livelihood
concerns inside the project design and structure of WORLP has led to its
‘socialization’.
Vernacular Usages of the Category of
Watershed
The term
‘watershed’ itself is understood differently by various groups of people. In
Odia, the actual and literal translation of the term ‘watershed’ is jala bibhajika, but
sometimes it is translated as jalachhaya. However, in
the field, no one uses the Odia term(s) for ‘watershed’ at all. Everyone uses
the term ‘watershed’ in everyday conversations in Odia, though the word means
different things to different people.
The dominant understanding amongst
watershed staff, especially the middle and the lower level staff among WDT
members and secretaries of the committees, of the term ‘watershed’ is that of a
project. They do not talk about watersheds per se but about discrete
projects such as WORLP or the various DPAP projects. The top-level officials of
the district watershed mission use the term ‘watershed’ in the way it is
‘supposed’ to be used—as a biophysical/environmental intervention.
Most villagers generally talk about
‘watershed’ in the same vein as they would talk about the police or the
agriculture department. Thus, they do not see it as either a project or a
‘mission’ but as another government department, though different in terms of
its orientation and functioning. However, this understanding varies across
PIAs.
For instance, in the NGO PIA, there are a few beneficiaries who see it as
a discrete project, whereas in the case of the governmental PIA, almost
everyone sees it as a government department. For example, people in villages,
while referring to the money coming into the village through the ‘watershed’,
would see it as sarkari tanka or government money, in the same way that they would talk
about interventions by other government departments.
Thus, the very meaning of
the word ‘watershed’ is contested socially. The following section tries to
trace the contours of the way in which the ‘social’ seems to emerge as a new
site and motif of governmental action.
THE FOCUS ON LIVELIHOODS AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE
‘SOCIAL’
The Perceived Importance of the ‘Social’
It was a warm day
in March, one of those days when one feels that spring in Odisha is not a
concoction of the imagination of a slightly delusional poet. There was not even
a nip of coolness in the air, but it was not hot either. The first author was
travelling inside an old, ratty ambassador car with Mr Mahanty, a WDT member
working with one of the governmental PIAs to attend a meeting of a committee.
The meeting apparently could not take place the previous month due to a lack of
quorum. This time, the secretary had sent an emergency notice to all the
committee members to attend the meeting, and Mr Mahanty was hoping that the
meeting would finally take place.
Mr Mahanty, a
reticent man, spoke slowly, emphasizing every word that he uttered. He was
curious about the researcher and the work, and after the initial pleasantries,
he looked at the researcher in amusement and said, ‘Your work sounds interesting; during our
student days, we could not even think that such work was possible.’ After
talking for some time about his M.Sc. dissertation, his interest in research
and his regret at not having followed a career in research, he said, ‘These
days “social” is very important.’
He gave the example of the watershed mission
and said, ‘See, at every level of the project, there is some social person; at
the district level, there is a social CBT member, at the PIA level, there is a
WDT social, and at the village level, there is a CLW social. Recently, they
[have been] thinking about eliminating the posts of the CLW, but one hears that
the post of the CLW social will remain. This is only to be expected.
When I
started working more than forty years back, it was just about doing technical
work and distributing stuff. Now it is all about motivating people. When we
started working, we never thought that things [would] come to such a pass. Now
we have to be servile to these ignorant villagers to get their own work done.
Not that I mind it too much. It is after all people’s work. But I am not used
to this, that is all there is to it. Now for young people such as you, this new
focus on social things is, of course, an opportunity.’
As mentioned
earlier, this focus on the ‘social’ is not merely seen in the narratives that
the project staff members tell each other and other curious observers. It is
there in the very architecture of the project itself. As regards the way in
which the accounting heads of the project work, there are heads that are
generally perceived as ‘technical’ and others that are perceived as
‘social’—NRM is seen as coming under the technical head, while RF and grant are
seen as coming under the ‘social’ head.
The money budgeted under the RF head
was mandated to be given to SHGs. In fact, the tasks of the WDT social and the
CLW social, along with those of some of the LSTs, were supposed to focus on the
work of the SHGs and other aspects of livelihood enhancement such as ensuring
that the livelihood grants were put to productive use.
The Social as ‘Messy’
The ‘social’, in
many accounts of work given by staff of the project, was seen as something
messy. Once, in the NGO PIA, all the
staff members, apart from the PIA himself and the WDT engineer, had gone on
leave because of a long weekend. The work in the village of Kalampada has been stuck for
quite some time, and even the committee meetings were not taking place. The
secretary of the Kalampada committee had fixed the meeting at a time when the meeting of another committee
was also taking place. Thus, the PIA went to attend the meeting of the other
village, and sent the WDT engineer to Kalampada, along with the researcher.
The WDT was very
reluctant to go, and we left a little late. For a change, when we arrived at
the venue, which was the village school, everyone was already there including
the president and the secretary. When the meeting started, it emerged that the
reason for the stalemate in the work of the committee was something relatively
small but symbolically big.
One of the committee members, who had taken the
contract as the head of a user group to construct a drain in one of the hamlets
of the village (as a community development initiative through WORLP), had
apparently done sub-standard work and had overcharged. The problem was that he
had refused to share the spoils with anyone else. In the meeting, people almost
came to blows, but the WDT did nothing to diffuse the situation.
Ultimately,
the relevant committee member agreed to donate a couple of thousand rupees to a
temple that was being constructed in the village and agreed to give bricks for
the construction of a platform around a big tree at a public place for the use
of everyone.
On the way back to
the office, when the WDT member was asked as to why he did not intervene in the
meeting at all, he said, ‘It’s beneath
me to get embroiled in village politics; I am much better off dealing with
estimates. Merely because the relevant staff is absent, I need not deal with
all this messy social stuff.’
He then gave a comparative account of the work he
had done in the same block, but with a governmental PIA as an engineering WDT
in another project. According to him, that project did not focus on the
so-called social aspects of work that much and, therefore, the ‘real’ work took
place in a much more efficient fashion. He gave the example of the village Laimera, where he had
constructed three water harvesting structures on a single stream, and he
referred to this work as a ‘visible’ piece of work that people still remember
him for.
He said, ‘Ei social social
hei khali jaha politics badhuchhi—au kanata labha nahele heuchhi apana mote
kuhantu?’ (‘Only politics is increasing because of this focus on the
‘social’. Otherwise what’s the benefit out of this, please tell me?’)
This was not an
isolated case. The discomfort of the engineering staff in dealing with non-technical
or social aspects of the project was much evident from the manner in which way
they did not want to fill in for social WDT members when the latter were on
leave. Even senior project staff members, especially some officers drawn from
the soil conservation department, saw the overtly social aspects of the project
as ‘messy’.
Many times, during interviews, they would voice concerns about the
deteriorating quality of the ‘technical’ aspects of the work because of the
need to factor in what they termed as ‘social concerns’. Thus, the ‘social’ was construed as something
messy due to the fact that it was difficult to deal with and manage, and it was
seen as something that adversely affected the quality of the technical aspects
of the work.
The ‘Social’ as a Marker between
Governmental Organizations and NGOs
Many PIAs, APDs
and CBT members saw the ‘social’ as a distinguishing marker between
governmental PIAs and NGO PIAs. Once, after a review meeting held at the
district headquarters, a governmental PIA elaborated informally over lunch
about the differences between how he worked and how an NGO PIA worked.
He said,
‘See, the NGOs are slightly better than us in terms of the work related to the
social aspects of the project, and this should be acknowledged. Since they have
been working in these areas for quite a few years, they also have a better
understanding of social aspects of these kinds of projects. Moreover, they are
used to working in a contractual fashion; therefore, they find it much easier
to deal with the contractual staff of the projects hired under the District
Watershed Mission [DWM].
To be honest, we governmental PIAs, who are mostly on
deputation, are yet to get a hang of the ways of dealing with the contractual
staff. But we are definitely better at doing the technical work. Most of these
NGO PIAs, in Kalahandi as well as elsewhere, have never employed proper
engineers, and these organizations have very little experience in doing
construction work. So the villagers can lead them on, whereas no villager can
take us for a ride. The NGOs also have better experience in these new things
such as community mobilization and awareness building. But we are also
learning. After all, all this new social nonsense is not rocket science.’
Narratives
surrounding the ‘social’ were also used as a marker to distinguish between the
earlier forms of watershed-related interventions in the soil conservation
department and the work now being done under the aegis of OWDM. The
higher-level staff members of the DWM, Kalahandi, see this difference through
the trope of participation.
As a senior official voiced in an interview,
‘Earlier when the soil conservation department used to work on watersheds,
there was no participation by the people. An engineer would go and survey the
area and depending upon the availability of funds and the needs of the
watershed, he would draw up estimates depending upon technical criteria. And
only when the actual earthwork started, people would come to know that a
project has come to their village. Now there is people’s participation because
of decentralized planning. Therefore, the importance of the social aspects of
the work has grown quite a bit.’
This
focus on the ‘social’ as a marker of difference posits certain aspects of the
work of the project as not being ‘social’. For example, the work of accounting
and auditing is not seen as being ‘social’ but as requiring technical expertise
that is difficult to acquire.
Emergence of the ‘Social’ and Imbrications in the
Field
The watershed-plus
approach with its focus on livelihoods can be seen as a way in which watershed
projects, and in our case the WORLP, is trying to ‘socialize’ the manner in
which the government functions. For example, the way the project is
structured—with all the work supposed to be carried out through the
village-level micro-watershed committees—is in itself a significant move at
‘socialization’.
The committee members and other village-level functionaries
are not chosen on the basis of education or competence, though the secretary is
expected to be at least a matriculate as he has to maintain the records of the
committee. This change has meant that the ‘social’ is being incorporated into
the machinery of the government through certain institutional assemblages such
as watershed committees, SHGs and user groups.
This focus on the
‘social’ seen in interaction with many other processes in the field has
provided some interesting results, one of which has been that the project has
aided vastly increased sightings of the state. A large number of the villagers
identified project staff from WORLP as the most visible amongst all government
departments. The creation of the watershed committees and the fact that the
work took place through them meant that at least one government staff member
visited the village at least once a month to attend the monthly meetings of the
committees.
Similarly, the work surrounding the small grants and RFs involved
frequent visits by the staff of the project of both the governmental and NGO
PIAs for facilitation and monitoring. Thus, one of the more important results
of the focus on the ‘social’ has been to increase the number of sightings of
government staff and thus, in effect, of the government and the state itself.
The focus on the
‘social’ has also led to a dramatic increase in the number of direct
beneficiaries. The livelihood promotion budget, comprising the RF for the SHGs
and the livelihood grants for individual households, constitutes more than a
quarter of the total budgeted amounts released to the various committees under
the project.
The minimum amount that could be distributed as livelihood grants
is Rs 4,000, though sometimes committees distributed Rs 3,000 per grant to
maximize the coverage of beneficiaries. On an average, around 150 households
belonging to the ‘poor’ and ‘very poor’ categories got livelihood grants in the
micro watersheds of the PIAs under study.
The number of households covered
under the RF component is at least 100 in most micro watersheds. Even allowing
for some overlap of households that have benefited from both the RFs and
livelihood grants, this is a large number of households, considering the fact
that most micro watersheds have around 400–500 households.
In fact, the
emergence of the ‘social’ due to a focus on livelihoods seems to be premised
upon such an effect. In many ways, this phenomenon of spreading things thin and
ensuring the sightings of the state functionaries seems to be built into the
very project architecture. For example, one of the goals for all project staff
members, especially for the staff members hired to deal with the overtly social
aspects of the project, has been to ensure that at least 80 per cent of
households in the project areas are covered through SHGs. The staff members
sometimes resent this, as it expands the scope of their work and makes them
much more ‘accessible’ to the villagers.
The promotion of
SHGs in the project area has fed into other kinds of processes in a few cases.
The emergence of the ‘social’ and the attendant establishment and strengthening
of institutions such as SHGs have resulted in the increasing penetration of
micro-credit institutions in many areas. Because of the existence of a robust
network of these SHGs, micro-credit institutions have found it easy to operate
in these villages.
Most SHGs in the micro watersheds in the project area of the
governmental PIA have a relatively poor record of ensuring the return of the
loans received through WORLP as RFs. But it would be perhaps unfruitful to judge
these institutions as ineffective on these grounds. By these SHGs and
handholding them during the initial part of their existence, the project has
created institutions that have gone on to perform other, and sometimes, similar
roles.
Many women stated
that by being part of SHGs, they have been able to become ‘forward’ (confident)
and that earlier, they would not have the confidence to talk to a government
official and other outsiders. But now they are able to do so. They see this as
a direct result of being a member of the SHGs, and thus a result of their
experience of training, exposure visits to other areas and the increased
opportunities of interacting with the ‘outside’ world within the village.
Another important
aspect of the emergence of the ‘social’ is the importance that is given to
‘process’ in WORLP. The process dimensions of the social components of the work
are stressed upon to a greater extent compared to the same dimensions of the
‘technical’ or ‘engineering’ aspects of the project work.
This may be read as
suggesting that perhaps the project managers have greater anxieties regarding
the social aspects of the work. But this can be posed in another way as well.
The way in which the auditors would want to ensure whether certain social goals
were fulfilled or not was by insisting that certain indicators and processes of
the social components of the project work were consistently followed.
Consequently, a large part of the work took place to ensure that the auditors
could be satisfied as and when auditing was carried out.
***
Watershed
development is increasingly being seen as an alternative to the traditional
paradigm of water resource development based on big dams. Simultaneously,
following critiques of approaches to watershed development that emphasized
biophysical criteria, concerns surrounding the non-biophysical issues such as
those involving livelihoods, especially in the dryland areas, have come to the
forefront during the same period of time.
On the basis of fieldwork undertaken
in Kalahandi in the project area of WORLP, this essay has argued that the
increasing importance given to livelihoods can be read as part of a process of
emergence of the ‘social’ as a site, object and domain of governmental
interventions. Such a focus on the ‘social’ is built into the project design as
well as the actual everyday practices of the project.
Most of the project staff
interviewed tended to foreground the increasing importance given to social
aspects (such as the formation of groups, distribution of livelihood-related
grants and loans, and following proper processes while doing the work, which
they saw as constituting the ‘social’) in the project.
Although watershed
is construed as a technical biophysical category, the meaning of the term ‘watershed’
is socially mediated and contested. The emergence of the ‘social’ is seen as an
important marker of difference between the work of the NGOs and government
organizations, on the one hand, and between the work of the OWDM and the state
soil conservation department, on the other. While the NGOs and OWDM are
perceived to be better at implementing the social aspects of watershed
development, government organizations and the soil conservation department are
perceived to be better at overseeing the ‘traditional’, technical aspects of
the work.
The undertaking of
new kinds of project activities related to the livelihoods of traditionally
marginal communities in watershed development and the concomitant rise of the
‘social’ has been accompanied by the state reaching out deep into village
society through organizational forms such as NGOs as project implementing
agencies and the evolution of new institutions such as micro-watershed
development committees at the village level.
The emergence of the ‘social’ as a site and mode of governance has
increased the sightings of the state for villagers by increasing the intensity
and the variety of ways in which governmental staff interact with them. It has
also increased, to a very large extent, the total number of beneficiaries that
come into contact with the governmental apparatus, cutting across NGOs and
governmental organizations as implementing agencies. The breadth of such a
phenomenon and its theoretical implications need to be teased out by further
research.
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Note: All the names used in this essay, apart from the name of the district and the project, are pseudonyms. The latest version of this piece was published as a book chapter in the volume, 'Thinking about Water in Uncertain Times: State People and Conflicts' - a collection of essays on the water sector by Sailen Routray and N Shantha Mohan - published by Aakar Books, New Delhi, in 2020. Although WORLP as a project is over, following the conventions of ethnography, the present tense used in the original article is retained here.
