Title:	Politics of Water Conservation
Authors:	Saurabh Gupta
Keywords:	Delivering Development
Issue Date:	2016
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	This book is about the politics of development in rural India. Its key aim is to explain development governance (distribution and control of resources and power) in rural Rajasthan, the driest and the largest province in India. I address this issue by examining recent initiatives by an array of state, non-state and transnational actors to increase the availability of water, food, fuelwood and fodder through soil and water conservation or ‘watershed development’ in Rajasthani villages. 1 ‘Watershed Development’ is a term used by rural development experts to describe technical approaches to check water and soil erosion in rain-fed areas in order to increase the productivity of land, and to meet the local requirements of food, fodder and fuelwood. This includes treatment of both arable and non-arable lands in a given watershed area through a wide range of physical activities, such as drainage line treatment by building a series of loose stone check dams and other structures to prevent water and soil erosion, farm bunding, construction of small water harvesting structures or development of pasture lands. Water is the lifeline of rural economic and social systems, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of India, where agriculture is heavily dependent upon rainfall and the means of secured irrigation are severely limited. Development strategies (in colonial and post-colonial times) have focused on ensuring the availability of water (for irrigation and drinking). However, three signifi cant shifts in development practice and policy have taken place in the past two decades. First, the state has gradually lost its privileged position as the leading agent of development prompting a substantial expansion in the role of non-state actors in rural development. 2 Second, there has been a rise in concern for ‘sustainability’, ‘participation’, ‘traditional knowledge’ and ‘decentralised management’ of natural resources (water or pasture lands), within academic and policy circles. Third, investments of money and resources by the state and non-state actors in rain-fed or ‘ecologically fragile’ regions of India have increased in the wake of limits to further increase in agricultural productivity of irrigated lands, and deliberate efforts (especially on the part of the Indian state) to reduce regional disparities in the post ‘green revolution’ era.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/48861
ISBN:	978-3-319-21392-7
Appears in Collections:	Rural Development Studies

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